Summary of Rosmini's Philosophy by Padre Giuseppe Bozzetti

(from the Enciclopedia Cattolica Italiana)

Declaration of the Holy See Concerning Rosmini

Rosmini and Rosminianism

Antonio Rosmini Serbati, philosopher, and founder of the Institute of Charity, born

24 March, 1797, at Rovereto, Austrian Tyrol; died 1 July, 1855, at Stresa, Italy;

was educated at home until his twentieth year, and, after a three years' course at

the University of Padua, returned to Rovereto to prepare for Holy orders. He was

ordained priest at Chioggia, 21 April, 1821, and in 1822 received at Padua the

Doctorate in Theology and Canon Law. In 1823 he went to Rome with Mgr.

Pyrker, Patriarch of Venice, met Consalvi and other prominent men, and was

encouraged by Pius VII to undertake the reform of philosophy. The next three

years (1823-26) he spent in philosophical pursuits at Rovereto, devoting himself

especially to the study of St. Thomas. He had already adopted as principles of

conduct:

never to assume external works of charity on his own initiative, but, until

summoned by some positive outward manifestation of God's will, to busy

himself with his own sanctification, a thing always pleasing in the Divine

sight (principle of passivity);

at any clear sign from God, to assume with alacrity any external work of

charity, without, so far as concerned his higher will personal preferences

or repugnances (principle of indifference).

On these maxims he based the rules of the Institute of Charity which, at the

instance of Maddalena, Marchioness of Canossa, and of John Loewenbruck, a

zealous priest from German Lorraine, he founded in 1828 at Monte Calvario near

Domodossola. In 1828 he again went to Rome, where he was encouraged by Leo

XII and later by Pius VIII to pursue his philosophical studies and consolidate his

institute. During this visit he published his "Maxims of Christian Perfection" and

his "Nuovo saggio sull' origine delle idee" (1829; tr. "Origin of Ideas", London,

1883-84). In the autumn of 1830 he inaugurated the observance of the rule at

Calvario, and from 1834 to 1835 had charge of a parish at Rovereto. About this

time the pope made over to Rosmini several missions tendered him in England

by the vicars Apostolic, as also the Abbey of S. Michele della Chiusa in

Piedmont. Later foundations followed at Stresa and Domodossola. The

Constitutions of the institute were presented to Gregory XVI and, after some

discussion regarding the form of the vow of religious poverty, were formally

approved 20 December, 1838. On 25 March, 1839, the vows of the institute were

taken by twenty Fathers in Italy and by six in England (Spetisbury and Prior

Park). The Letters Apostolic ("In sublimi", 20 Sept., 1839) formally recorded the

approval of the institute and its rule, and appointed Rosmini provost general for

life. The institute then spread rapidly in England and Italy, and requests for

foundations came from various countries. The publication of Rosmini's "Trattato

della coscienza morale" (Milan, 1839) led to a sharp controversy. Against

Rosmini were writers like Melia, Passaglia, Rozaven, Antonio Ballerini, all

members of the Society of Jesus, in which Rozaven held the office of assistant to

the general. On the defensive, along with Rosmini, were L. Eastaldi, Pestalozza,

Pagamini. For fifteen years the wordy war was protracted, with a truce from 1843

to 1846, due to an injunction of Gregory XVI enjoining perpetual silence on both

sides. Pius IX, who succeeded Gregory in 1846, showed himself favourable to the

institute, and various new foundations in England attested its vitality. In 1848

Rosmini published (Milan) his "Costituzione secondo la giustizia sociale" and

"Cinque piaghe della chiesa"; the latter against Josephism, especially in the

matter of Austrian episcopal appointments in Northern Italy. In August of the

same year, he was sent to Rome by King Charles Albert of Piedmont to enlist

the pope on the side of Italy as against Austria. Pius IX appointed him one of the

consultors to deliberate on the definability of the doctrine of the Immaculate

Conception, and at the outbreak of the revolution asked Rosmini to share his

exile at Gaeta. Antonelli's influence, however, prevailed and Rosmini left Gaeta,

19 June, 1849. His works, "Costitunone" and "Cinque piaghe", were condemned

in August, a sentence which he unhesitatingly accepted. A further attack was

made on him in the "Postille" and the "Lettere di un prete Bolognese" (1848).

Pius IX (1850) referred the "Postille" to the Congregation of the Index, which

rejected it as false. In view of other charges the pope ordered an examination of

all Rosmini's works. The decision, rendered 3 July, 1854, was that all the works

be dismissed (esse dimittenda), that the investigation implied nothing

disparaging to the author, to the institute founded by him, or to his exceptional

services to the Church, and that to prevent any renewal and dissemination of

charges and strife, silence was for the third time imposed on both parties. Within

a year after this decision Rosmini died. His body reposes in the Church of the

Santissimo Crocifisso built by him at Stresa. (See ROSMINIANS.)

THE ROSMINIAN SYSTEM

According to Rosmini, philosophy is "the science of the ultimate reasons or

grounds of human knowledge". The philosopher at the outset must answer the

questions: What is knowledge? What is thought? Can we be certain of what we

know? Rosmini's answer is given in his ideology and logic. Intellect, he holds, is

essentially different from sense; thought is objective, sensation is subjective. The

term of the intellectual act is seen in such a way that the seer, at the moment, is

conscious neither of himself nor of any relation with himself as seeing. The primal

and essential act of human intelligence, thus terminating in its object, is intuition

— an attitude rather than an activity, in which the mind pronounces no judgment

on what is known, but merely receives the communication of the intelligible

object. All our concepts, when analyzed, reveal being (somethingness) as their

essential constituent; or, conversely, human concepts are nothing but

determinations more or less complex of the simple and elementary notion of

being. This fundamental idea is indeterminate and general, conveying to the

intellect no knowledge of particular things, but simply manifesting itself as the

essence of being. Our abstraction does not produce it, but merely discovers it

already present in thought. Being, as it appears within man's experience, has

two modes, each governed by its own conditions and laws, each with

well-defined attributes, diverse, but not contradictory. Manifesting itself to the

mind as the intelligible object, not exerting any stimulus upon the intellect, but

simply illuminating it, this is being in its ideal mode. As it acts or is acted upon

in feeling, modifying the human subject in sensation, constituting the sentient

principle in action and passion, this is being in its real mode. The former is

essentially objective, simple, and one — universal, necessary, immutable,

eternal; the latter is subjective and, in our world, contingent, particular, temporal,

manifold, and almost infinitely varied in aspect. Ideal being is not God, but we

may call it, says Rosmini, an appurtenance of God, and even Divine, for its

characteristics are not those of created finite things, and its ultimate source

must be in God. If thought had in it no element transcending the contingent and

finite, all knowledge of the absolute and infinite would be inexplicable, and truth,

uncertain and variable, would exist only in name.

To explain our knowledge of particular real entities, Rosmini says that our

knowledge of realities reduces itself to a judgment whereby we predicate

existence of what is felt by us. Real entities act upon man's senses, and he

immediately recognizes them as particular activities of that essence of being

already manifested under another mode in intuition. Because of its simplicity, the

human ego, or subject-principle, is constrained to bring together and collate its

feeling and its knowledge of being, and thus it perceives being energizing in the

production of feeling. This act of the human subject whereby it cognizes real

entities, Rosmini calls reason. By sense we are introduced to realities, but we

could not know them as beings unless we already possessed the idea of being.

This is given to our mind prior to all perception or individual cognition; it is not

acquired by any act of thought, but is implanted in us by the Creator from the

beginning of our existence: it is innate, and constitutes for us the light of reason.

Furthermore, it is the very form of the human intelligence, a form not multiple, but

one — not subjective, but objective — i. e., not a quality or attitude or component

of the human subject, but distinct from it and superior to it, existing in an

absolute mode and called the form of the mind because, in manifesting itself to

man, it draws forth and creates, so to speak, the act of his intelligence.

Logic, says Rosmini, is "the science of the art of reasoning". The scope of

reasoning is certainty, i. e., a firm persuasion conformable to truth. The truth of a

thing is, in last analysis, its being, and since being is the form of the human

intellect, it follows that a criterion of truth and certainty lies at the base of all

thought and reasoning. The principles which govern reflection and argument are

founded on the primitive intuition of being. "Being is the object of thought"; this is

the principle of cognition, and it is antecedent to the principle of contradiction.

Error is found, not in the idea of being, which is without any determination, nor in

the principles of reasoning, which simply express the essential object of the

mind in the form of a proposition without adding anything foreign, but in reflection,

and hence in the will, which usually initiates reflection. Logic shows us how to

use reflection so as to attain truth and avoid error.

The Sciences of Perception are psychology and cosmology. The subject of

psychology is the ego in its primal condition, i. e., stripped of its acquired

relations and developments. The soul is felt by and through itself; it is essentially

a principle of feeling. "The human soul is an intellective and sensitive subject or

principle, having by nature the intuition of being and a feeling whose term is

extended, besides certain activities consequent upon intelligence and

sensitivity." This "extended term" is twofold: space, which, simple and

immovable, underlies all sense phenomena as the idea of being underlies the

phenomena of thought; and body, a limited extended force which the sentient

principle passively receives and thereby acquires individuation. It is a favourite

doctrine of Rosmini that the extended can exist only in synthesis with a simple,

immaterial principle. Considered apart from this principle, the material corporeal

term lacks the unity and coherence necessary for existence and permanence.

Our own body, the "subjective body", is felt directly as the proper term of the

human sentient principle and is the seat of corporeal feelings. Other (external)

bodies, since they modify not the soul, but the bodily term in connexion with the

soul, are felt by an extra-subjective perception. We feel our own bodies as we

feel external bodies, through vision, touch etc.; but we also feel them

immediately with a fundamental feeling, always identical and substantial, in

which no distinct limits, figure, or relation of parts can be assigned. Shape,

hardness, colour etc., belong to the extra-subjective world. But the body is not

merely felt by the soul; it is also intellectually perceived by the soul in a

primordial and immanent judgment, whereby being is applied to it (the body) in

the way above described. In this perception is found the true nexus intimately

uniting soul and body. The body is the felt-understood term of the human

principle which in this intellective synthesis performs its first act as a rational

soul and exerts a real physical influence on its bodily term. Hence Rosmini's

definition of life as "the incessant production of all those extra-subjective

phenomena which precede, accompany, and follow parallel with the corporeal

and material feeling (subjective)".

Every time that by generation an animated organism is produced, perfectly

constituted according to the human type, the vivifying, sentient principle rises to

the vision of the intelligible object, ideal being. This happens in virtue of a

primordial law, established by God in the creative act. There is, however, no

chronological passing from sentience to intelligence, as if one could assign an

instant in which the human soul was purely sentient and another following in

which it had become rational. All is consummated in a single point of time. The

soul's immortality is deduced from its nature as an intellective principle having for

its object-term the eternal and necessary idea of being. This is independent of

space and time, and the act of intuition continues even after the bodily term has

been dissolved by death, and the soul's immanent perception of its body has

been for a period destroyed.

Cosmology, which considers the ordered universe, the nature of contingent real

being and its cause, is not a complete science in itself; it must be treated in

connexion with the sciences of reasoning in which reflection, testing the

observations of intuition and perception, discovers new truths and arrives at the

existence of beings beyond the reach of intuition and perception.

The Sciences of Reasoning are ontological and deontological. The former

comprise ontology and natural theology. Ontology treats of being in all its extent

as known to man, viz., ideal being, the necessary object of the intellect; real

being, i.e., subjective force and feeling; moral being, the relation between real

and ideal — a special act of recognition and adherence on the part of the subject

harmonizing it with the object. Light, life, love; intellect, sense, will — these are

the forms under which the essence of being manifests itself in man's world; they

are also the foundation of the categories. Natural theology treats of the Absolute

Being, God. The existence of God is known, not through perception or direct

intuition, but through reasoning. Ideal being is being under only one of its forms

and therefore incomplete; in the real world we meet only partial realizations of

being. Comparing in reflection the products of our perception with the essence of

being manifested in intuition, we see that they do not exhaust the possibilities of

that essence; yet this must find its full realization in some way far transcending

our experience; it cannot, in that fulness, be finite and imperfect as are the things

of this world. This knowledge of the Absolute Being Rosmini calls negative-ideal;

it tells us not so much what God is as what God is not.

Definite proofs of God's existence are furnished by being in its essence and in

each of its forms. The essence of being is eternal, necessary, infinite; but these

attributes it would not possess if it did not subsist identical under the other two

forms of reality and morality, complete and perfect. Where it exists under all

these forms, it is being in every way infinite and absolute, i. e., God. Again, the

ideal form that creates intelligence is an eternal object and hence demands an

eternal subject with infinite wisdom — God. The real form of being is contingent,

and it therefore postulates a First Cause in whose essence subsistence is

included. Finally, the binding force of the moral law is eternal, necessary,

absolute, and its ultimate sanction must be found in an Absolute Being in whom

the essence of holiness subsists. Thus man naturally does not perceive God; his

knowledge of God is but of a negative kind. In the supernatural order of grace, the

real communication of God to man, a new light super-added to that of reason

brings man into conjunction with God's own reality, which reveals itself to him in

an incipient and obscure manner, yet acts upon the soul with positive efficacy.

Thus the Christian becomes a new creature, consors divinœ naturœ.

The deontological sciences treat of the perfections of beings and the ways in

which these perfections may be acquired, produced, or lost. Amongst them,

ethics, the science of virtue, is prominent (see "Compendio di Etica", Rome,

1907). Each moral act contains three elements: the law, the subject's free will,

and the relation (agreement or disagreement) between law and will. Man is not a

law unto himself; the moral imperative must come from a higher source, from the

necessary and universal object of the understanding Being, manifested to the

mind, has an order of its own, and the various entities we know though it occupy

different places in the scale of excellence. We cognize them by an act of

intellect; we recognize them by a practical act of our will, adhering to the good

we see in them with an intensity determined by the moral exigence of the object.

The idea of an entity, therefore, as the medium which reveals its excellence,

clothes itself with the authority of law; and as all ideas are but determinations of

the idea of being, the first of laws and the first principle of obligation is: "Follow

the light of reason", or "Recognize being". Besides the testimony of

consciousness and the consent of mankind, the proofs for free-will, i. e., the

power of choice between objective good (duty) and subjective good (pleasure,

self-interest), are closely bound up with Rosmini's theory of man and the soul.

Man is stimulated by sensation and his subjective modifications; at the same

time he is illumined by the light of being eternal and absolute whence he can

draw strength to overcome the allurements of sense and unite himself to the

absolute good.

In reference to the third element Rosmini used a distinction which led to sharp

controversy. By peccatum (sin) he means the sinful condition of the will in its

antagonism to objective good; by culpa (sin as fault), the same condition

considered relatively to its cause, free will. Ordinarily, peccatum is also culpa,

and every sin is traceable to a free agent. But, in abnormal circumstances, there

may be peccatum where there is not, at the moment, culpa. The acts of an

acquired sinful habit, when performed without advertence or deliberation, are

contrary to law, though at the moment the will is not responsible. They are culpœ

and imputable, but to complete the imputability one must link them with the first

free wicked acts whence the habit resulted. Original sin is a true sin yet not a

culpa, not imputable to the person in whom it is found as to its free cause. The

responsible cause is to be sought in the free will of Adam, whose sin was both

peccatum and culpa. Rosmini wrote voluminously in defence of the traditional

Catholic doctrine of original sin. Conscience he defines as "a speculative

judgment on the morality of the practical judgment"; and since morality, he

points out, belongs to an order of reflection anterior to the conscience, there may

exist in man moral or immoral conditions apart from conscience — a doctrine

which he also applied to original sin and to certain states of virtue and vice.

Regarding probabilism, he distinguishes, in the question of the doubtful law, what

is intrinsically evil from what is evil only on account of some extrinsic cause, for

example, prohibition by positive law, and lays down the rule: "If there is a doubt

respecting the existence of the positive law, and the doubt cannot be resolved,

the law is not binding; but if there is a doubt in a matter pertaining to the natural

law and relating to an evil inherent in action, the risk of the evil must be avoided."

This theory provoked controversy, but Rosmini maintained that it accorded

substantially with the teaching of St. Alphonsus Ligouri.

The science of rational right arises from the protection which the moral law

affords to the useful good. The classification of the goods and rights which we

possess in our relations with our fellow-men, is based on freedom and property.

Freedom is the power, which each one has, to use all his faculties and resources

so long as he does not encroach on the rights of others. Property is the union of

goods with the human personality by a triple bond, physical, intellectual, and

moral. The moral bond guards the other two, for the moral law forbids one man to

wrest from another what he has united to himself by affection and intelligence.

The subject of right may be either the individual man or man in society.

Concerning the three societies necessary for the full development of the human

race, Rosmini speculates at length in his "Filosofia del diritto" (Milan, 1841-43).

Rosmini applied his philosophical principles to education in "Della educazione

cristiana" (Milan, 1856) and especially, "Del principio supremo della metodica"

(Turin, 1857; tr. by Grey, "The Ruling Principle of Method Applied to Education",

Boston, 1893). His basic idea is that education must follow the natural order of

development. The mind of the child must be led from the general to the particular.

The natural and necessary order of all human thoughts is expressed in the law:

"A thought is that which becomes the matter, or provides the matter of another

thought." The whole sum of thoughts which can occur to the human mind is

classified in divers orders of which Rosmini enumerates five. To the first order

belong thoughts whose matter is not taken from antecedent thoughts; each of

the successive orders is characterized by its matter being taken from the order

immediately preceding it. The ruling principle of method is: Present to the mind of

the child (and this applies to man in general), first, the objects which belong to

the first order of cognitions, then those which belong to the second order, and so

on, taking care never to lead the child to a cognition of the second order without

having ascertained that his mind has grasped those of the first order relative to it,

and the same with regard to the cognitions of the third, fourth, and other higher

orders. In applying this principle to the different orders, Rosmini explains the

cognitions proper to each, the corresponding activities, the instruction which they

require, the moral and religious education which the child should receive. Both in

his general theory of adapting education to the needs of the growing mind and in

the importance he attached to instinct, feeling, and play, Rosmini anticipated

much that is now regarded as fundamental in education. "The child", he says, "at

every age must act." To regulate the different kinds of activity, and to make each

kind reasonable, is really to educate. It is in the kindergarten system of Fröbel,

the contemporary of Rosmini, that these principles are most fully worked out.

The most important of Rosmini's posthumous works, the "Teosofia" (ontology

and natural theology), was published in five volumes (Turin, 1859-64; Intra,

1864-74). In 1876 some Catholic newspapers and periodicals in Italy, interpreting

the "Dimittantur" decree of 1854, declared that Rosmini's works were open both

to criticism and to censure. The Rosminian school on the contrary maintained

that, while the decree gave no positive approval, it at least guaranteed that the

books examined contained nothing worthy of censure and could therefore be

safely read, and their conclusions accepted by Catholics. This view seemed to

be confirmed by the Master of the Sacred Palace, who, in a letter to the

"Osservatore Romano" (16 June, 1876), reminded the editor of the silence

enjoined on both parties and stated that no theological censure could be inflicted.

A month later, the "Osservatore Cattolico" of Milan, as ordered by the Prefect of

the Congregation of the Index, acknowledged its interpretation to be erroneous.

After the death of Pius IX, the controversy was renewed. An answer of the Index

was given (21 June, 1880) that "dimittantur signifies only this — a work

dismissed is not prohibited" — and another (5 Dec., 1881) that a work dismissed

is not to be held as free from every error against faith and morals and may be

criticized both philosophically and theologically without incurring the note of

temerity. Both answers were taken by the adversaries of Rosmini's doctrines to

justify new censures, while the Rosminian writers contended that these answers

in no degree rendered untenable the position they had always occupied. On 14

Dec., 1887, a decree of the Inquisition condemned forty propositions taken from

the works of Rosmini. The decree, published 7 March, 1888, lays special stress

on the posthumous works which, it says, developed and explained doctrines

contained in germ in the earlier books; but the propositions condemned have no

theological nota attached. About one-half of the propositions refer to Rosmini's

ontology and natural theology; the remainder, to his teachings on the soul, the

Trinity, the Eucharist, the supernatural order and the beatific vision (Denzinger,

"Enchir.", 1891 sq.). Some of the propositions were clearly taught in the works

examined in 1854; others repeated what Rosmini had said over and over again in

the principal books published during his lifetime. The superior general of the

Institute of Charity enjoined obedience and submission on the members. Leo XIII

in a letter to the Archbishop of Milan (1 June, 1889) plainly stated that he

approved and confirmed the decree. Cardinal Mazella discussed the propositions

exhaustively in "Rosminianarum propositionum trutina theologica" (Rome, 1892).

This brought out a reply from an erudite layman, Prof. Giuseppe Morando, under

the title "Esame critico delle 40 proposizioni Rosminiane" (Milan, 1905).

Besides the works already mentioned, Rosmini wrote a large number of treatises

the more important of which are: "Il Rinnovamento della Filosofia in Italia" (Milan,

1836); "Psicologia", (Novara, 1843; Turin, 1887; tr., London, 1884-88); "Logica",

(Turin, 1853; Intra, 1868); "La Filosofia della Morale" (Milan, 1831);"

L'Antropologia in servizio della Scienza Morale" (Milan, 1838); "Antropologia

sopranaturale" (Casale, 1884); "Teodicea" (Milan, 1845); "Filosofia della Politica"

(Milan, 1858); "La societa e il suo fine" (Milan, 1839); "V. Gioberti e il

Panteismo" (Milan, 1847); "Introduzione alla Filosofia" (Casale, 1850); "Introd. al

Vangelo secondo S. Giovanni" (Turin, 1882).

Rosmini: ANON., La Vita di Antonio Rosmini (Turin, 1897), the standard life, written by a priest of

the Institute of Charity; ANON., Piccola Vita di Antonio Rosmini (Casale, 1897); Della Missione a

Roma di Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, negli Anni 1848-49 (Turin, 1881); Epistolario completo di

Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (Casale, Turin, 1887-94); PAOLI, Memorie della vita di Antonio

Rosmini-Serbati (Turin, 1880-84); Antonio Rosmini e la sua prosapia (Rovereto, 1880); Life of

Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, ed. LOCKHART (London, 1886); The Life of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, tr.

from the Italian of PAGANI (London, 1907).

DAVIDSON, Rosmini's Philosophical System (London, 1882) contains a copious bibliography of the

works of Rosmini and his school.

Rosminian School: BURONI, Dell' Essere e del Conoscere, studii su Parmenide Platone e Rosmini

(Turin, 1878); FERRE, Degli Universali secondo la Teoria Rosminiana (Casale, 1880-86);

PESTALOZZA, Le Dottrine di A. Rosmini difese (Milan, 1851; Lodi, 1853); PETRI, A. Rosmini e i

Neo-Scolastici (Rome, 1878); BILLIA, Quaranta Proposizioni attribuite ad A. Rosmini (Milan, 1889);

Per Ant. Rosmini nel primo centenario della nascita (Milan, 1897); MORANDO, Il Rosminianismo e

l'Enciclica Pascendi, and Apparenti Contraddizioni di S. Tommaso, reprinted from the Rivista

Rosminiana (1908); MANZONI, Il Dialogo sull' Invenzione (Milan, 1879); CALZA AND PEREZ,

Esposizione della Filosofia di A. Rosmini (Intra, 1878); CASARA, La Luce dell' occhio corporeo e

quella dell' Intelletto (Parabiago, 1879).

Periodicals: La Sapienza (Turin, 1879-86) (ed. PAPA); La Rivista Rosminiana (Voghera, 1905) (ed.

MORANDO).

Opposing Schools: Postille (s. d.); Alcune Affermazioni del Sig. A. Rosmini prete roveretano con un

saggio di riflessioni scritte da Eusebio Cristiano (s. d.); Principi della scuola Rosminiana esposti in

Lettere Famigliari da un Prete Bolognese (Milan, 1850); GIOBERTI, Degli Errori Filosofici di A.

Rosmini (Capologo, 1846); CORNOLDI, Il Rosminianismo sintesi dell' Ontologismo e del Panteismo

(Rome, 1881); LIBERATORE, Degli Universali (Rome, 1881-83), tr. DERING,. On Universals

(Leamington, 1889); MAZZELLA, Rosminianarum propositionum trutina theologica (Rome, 1892);

ZIGLIARA, Il Dimittatur e la spiegazione datane dalla S. Congregazione dell' Indice.

Independent: SHELDON, The Teachings of A. Rosmini, in Papers of the American Society of

Church History 1897, VIII; DYROFF, Rosmini, in the series Kultur und Katholizismus (Munich 1906);

ORESTANO, Rosmini, in the series Biblioteca Pedagogica (Rome, 1908); PALHORIÈS, Rosmini, in

the series Les Grands Philosophes (Paris, 1908).

George Cormack

D. Hickey

Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter

Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIII

Nihil Obstat, February 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, D.D., Censor

Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org

_________________________

Summary of Rosmini's Philosophy by Padre Giuseppe Bozzetti

(from the Enciclopedia Cattolica Italiana):

Rosmini gives the maximum importance to immediate experience, as the base of dialectic reasoning. He rebukes Germanic idealism as a grave error of method and a true sophism having the pretext of starting from the "I" (conscious of itself) and from philosophic thought, without taking account of the rational human activity which precedes it and underlies it; rebuking it for even presuming to be able also to deny it or completely undervalue it. There is a profound tendency in Rosmini for psychological analysis and for the search for that which is the "direct" life of man, as opposed to that about which the subject is aware and that he directs by a reasoning will. The unconscious is one of the laws of human activity and many things "are or are born in the mind and in the heart of man about which he has no awareness. This is one of the factors of the human spirit, which can easily escape him and, which, nevertheless, are of supreme necessity to whoever wishes to do philosophy."

The psychological analysis given to Rosmini shows that the first act by which man exists is a synthesis, whose elements are: 1) a fundamental bodily sentiment; 2) a sensitive perception; 3) an intuition (or intellection) of being.

The first two place and circumscribe the individual subjectivity of man; the third actuates man in so far as he is intelligent; but their sustenance is one thing only, given the reciprocal need that they have for one in order to be able to realize themselves. The words from Saint Augustine's "On the Trinity": "I shall impress upon you, if I can, in order that you may see yourself to see", is placed as the motto at the beginning of the second volume of his work, "The Origin of Ideas", where he lays out his solution to the problem of knowledge and illustrates these three mentioned elements. They are something immediate, present in us, even if not habitually averted to. "Man does not know any other reality in himself", writes Rosmini, "except his own fundamental sentiment and his own intellective sentiment"; but these two sentiments in fact do not exist except in a living unity: the "rational sentiment", which truly is " fundamental to us". Such sentiment individualizes the human subject, who is a single principle of two terms, which simultaneously characterize him: 1) the body, in which and through which man finds himself in relation with the world of material sensitive experience, 2) ideal being ("the idea of being"), objective form or "formal object", whose presence gives to the subject its true intellective, and therefore rational, actuality. Thus man results from an intellective principle which individualizes himself by means of a bodily sentiment "perceiving it", that is, actualizing itself by way of permanent synthesis with it.

The fundamental bodily sentiment is the single, uniform, continuous, "unfigured" act, with which we sense our body in so far as it is living: it renders the possibility for the body to react to external stimuli and to give occasion to the various, discontinuous, particular sensations, determined by the different organs of sense, but identical in belonging to a single subject of which they are from time to time passing modifications.

One's own body ("substance furnished with extension, that produces in us a pleasing or painful feeling, which terminates in the same extension"), comes perceived in the fundamental sentiment as force with respect to which the soul is passive, and this is proof of the otherness of the body with respect to the soul. But together the soul reacts on the body, and occupies it, and makes it its own (psychological fact from which is born the concept in general of possession), using it as its own instrument and nevertheless averting in it a power of resistance to its activity. The body presents itself therefore according to this double aspect: 1) subjective in so far as made precisely of the soul and become co-subject with it; 2) extra-subjective in so far as perceived in the same manner as the bodies extraneous to ours.

The subjective body is the true "my" body. The body in so far as extra-subjective is "mine" with an analogous meaning in the manner according to which the cloths we wear are mine. However the two modes of the body are inseparable in the natural order (not thus in the supernatural order). The subjective body must not, however, be confused with the fundamental sentiment; this is an act of the soul; on the other hand, the subjective body involves the physical material in its immediate relation with the soul which vivifies it. The sensitive perception is also a primitive act of the soul; both of its own body in so far as extra-subjective, and of other bodies.

To feel our body is to feel together with it all the actions which the forces of the world exert upon it: in a certain manner, all the material universe, through a synthesis of all its elements, of which no one exists absolutely to itself, but exists in relation with others; while for its part, these exist through the relation which they have with it (which is one of the applications of the "law of synthesis").

But neither the sentiment, nor the perception are human acts if not in so far as both form a synthesis with that which, for Rosmini, is the form of the "rational sentiment", proper to man, or rather, the presence of the formal intellective object, ideal being: "being" as the light of the mind. It is "form" which renders the perception, true cognition, that is to say, intellective perception; "form" in a sense very different from the Kantian form, because objective and not merely functional (Rosmini's critique of Kant is harsh both because of the persistent subjectivism of human knowing - an involuntary residue of sensism, and because of the groundlessness of the "a priori" synthetic judgments). The objectivity of the "form" of human knowing is what Rosmini especially insists upon against Kant and idealism.

From a passage of the Summa Theologica: "The object of the intellect is universal being and universal truth", Rosmini means to draw inspiration for his theory of the idea of being whose innateness he shows in a minute proof in the Origin of Ideas, distinguishing, however, his innateism from that of Plato and other thinkers, because that which he considers innate in the mind has the characteristic of indeterminateness. Whence he declares: "if by cognition one understands those notices which come (to man) from his own mental operations, then one cannot give the name of cognition to the notice of indeterminate being which is present to the intuition". This being is "indeterminate" in the sense that it has with itself an infinite potentiality of determining itself, dialectically anterior to any actual distinct operation of the intelligent subject. It is that which renders the subject capable of doing such operations; it is the light of reason, having the characters of universality, absoluteness and necessity, and containing implicit, the principles of reason. It should not be confused, however, with the idea of being as the ultimate result of the abstractive process. To avoid the danger of this confusion, Rosmini later prefers the expression: ideal being, which seems to him also apt to show the nexus between ontology and gnoseology [the branch of philosophy which treats of cognition].

Being has an immediacy of relationship with the human soul, not only in the ideal form (by which man is made capable of realizing truth and certainty: Origin of Ideas), or in the real form by means of the perception of the "I", or the perception of bodies, but also in the moral form, that is, in so far as being is object and criterion of judgment.

The light of reason has, in fact, a logical priority on the principle of morality, but together with this, it "informs" the human soul in a single primitive act, and thus, reason and will arise in him at one time; and the "primitive perception" or first substantial synthesis with which man begins to realize himself, is also an act of judgment.

The formula of the supreme moral principle is "the practical (voluntary) recognition (esteem, love) of being in its own order". The concept of the order of being is born from the measure which everything has, seen in the universal relationship of beings, and it appears little by little more clear with lived experience: "it loves being wherever it knows it, in that order in which it presents itself to our intelligence".

Every moral act, even though carrying itself towards a particular and limited object, sees being and loves it in the universal order of which it is a part, and therefore it loves in it, implicitly all being: morality, in its very self, tends to the infinite good.

When, then, the intelligence presents to man Being, first and supreme Absolute, man sees that "all the other beings compared to Him have only relative entity, and He, however, is the end of all. Therefore the other beings, and the estimate which one makes of them, must be ordered and referred to that Supreme (Being)". It follows that morality finds its complement, indeed, its most real and concrete foundation, in absolute Being "as that to which one refers every entity, and, in consequence, every estimate which one makes of the various entities".

Here morality meets with religion, and one understands in what sense one cannot have a full morality, except it be religious. In any case, the moral law is in man, it enters into the very act of his being constituted man with intelligence and will, but it does not become therefore its subjective and individualizing element; it remains in respect to this, the same as the light of reason (the idea of being), in a relationship of immediacy, yes, but at the same time of objectivity and it conserves its absoluteness in the face of the relativity of the existence of man as an individual. In this way Rosmini intends to save the interiority of the moral life and, at the same time, he preserves the reconciliation between human reality, in its unsuppressible need of happiness (Eudemonology), and the moral requirement.

"Both justice as well as beatitude are able to be said the end of man; but justice is the end that man must propose to himself; beatitude is the end which, creating man, God has intended. The nature of man desires essentially beatitude; therefore precisely beatitude is not a duty, nor is it, as such, the end which the will of man must propose to himself, but it is the end which can be proposed to himself, and which he cannot do less than propose to himself. If then one considers beatitude. . . that which in it is just, then beatitude, as well, is the end which man must propose to himself: that is, he must . . . love happiness considered as the effect of justice, and therefore as something willed by God: since God wills the beatitude of the just man; and it is something more than just, that the just man be happy".

Against Idealism, which tried to reduce all man to pure thinking activity, Rosmini affirmed the true concept of man as an "intellective and volitive animal subject", revealing the manifold nature in its unity. The subject "man", in so far as rational, is person. To the person belongs all the activities of the nature, including the instinct, of which Rosmini illustrates two aspects: vital and sensual, showing by what manner it imitates the rational activity; but the human person has for its principal instrument and base, the will, which Rosmini, against Kant, does not identify with the moral law, vindicating the true nature of moral obligation. This is "the obligation that a person has to work in a determinate manner so as not to render himself defective", that is, so as not to diminish the value which derives to him from being in communion with the objective order of being. This cannot but refer to a free being: liberty is precisely the peak of personal activity.

Free will is the faculty of choice between the objective order and a subjective good; that is, between two criteria of valuation, which can come into conflict: the one offered from the need of subjectivity, necessary for man to exist as individual, the other offered from the need of the objective and universal value of being, which is also necessary to man to exist as a person. It is up to man to decide between the two needs which have, each in a different way, something of totalitarian and of the irreducible, while each promises to man, if satisfied, an augment: the one of natural life, the other of personal value.

In the Moral Anthropology is given the conceptual distinction between nature and person. While embracing both, all the subsistence of being itself, indicates, the first, the complex of all the elements of being (evaluated in it own quality and function), the second, the intrinsic order of such elements: the "person is an intellective subject in so far as he includes a supreme (independent) active principle". Concerning this doctrine, Rosmini develops applications not only in ethics, but also in law, in politics, in education, and in theology: the doctrine of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, and of original sin. The human person has absolute dignity, in so far as man by nature has a divine light innate to his reason (ideal being), and "since the dignity of this light is infinite, therefore nothing can stand above the personal principle".

The metaphysical justification of this affirmation is given in the vast posthumous work, Theosophy (that is, theory of absolute thinking). The central question is the antinomy (Rosmini recognizes the merit of Kant in having brought up the problem of antinomies) between the unity of being and the multiplicity of beings.

The unity for Rosmini is found in the "commonest being", which he calls the "essence of being", common ground of all the determinations in which being manifests itself. It is not the "idea of being" of the Origin of Ideas, which is one of its determinations in so far as light of the mind. Its fundamental character is the infinite virtuality of receiving determinations, in which, precisely, one finds the reason (the possibility of being thought) of the multiplicity. It is therefore the "dialectic beginning" of all entities.

Having (Idealism) confused it with God, it had to lead to pantheism. It is true that the "identical initial being is in the divine mind, in the human mind, and in the finite beings, created by divine Intelligence, and perceived by man"; but this is as a consequence of creation. God abstracts it from Himself. In regard to God Himself, it is only an abstraction and its ontological existence is based in its relationship with the creative act. It is in regard to us, that it exists as something truly ontological; it precedes dialectically every single existence in creation and constitutes formally the light of reason. However it has, above all, an intrinsic multiplicity.

From here the doctrine of the three forms of being. Ideal, real, moral (or subjectivity, objectivity, morality), are no longer, as in the first works of Rosmini, supreme categories, inductively drawn from observation; they are, under another aspect, essential forms which all and three show themselves deductively necessary to the "essence of being", and distinct from one another but interdependent.

The demonstration is given in Theosophy: "1st. Supposing that there is ideal being, but that there is in the totality, things not at all real; one would be making an absurd supposition, namely, a contradictory concept. 2nd. Supposing that there is real being, but in the totality of things, one might not find ideal being at all; the supposition would be equally absurd. 3rd. Supposing that there is ideal and real being, and that there is not that relation between them which constitutes the moral form; again, the supposition would be absurd".

The virtuality, therefore characteristic of "the essence of being" is a virtuality of real, ideal and moral at the same time, and if it might not be simultaneously of all and three, and of their organic relationship, it would remain canceled. The form of being is: "being itself which, although, completely whole, is in various ways, essential to it".

The analogy with the three Divine Persons of Catholic dogma is evident, an analogy which Rosmini excluded might lead to confusion, when you keep present the essential impersonality of the "essence of being" and therefore of its "forms". Ideal being then is the only "form" which is communicated totally to man, as light of his mind. As to real being, man, like the other created beings, does not share it except in a limited manner, and likewise for moral being, does not arrive at it, even in a continual possible development, except in a limited measure. This is so because of the intrinsic multiplicity of being.

The essence of being, moreover, is open to an extrinsic multiplicity, that is, not essential to it, receiving determinations or limited boundaries. Proper boundaries are those which fit the proper characters of the above mentioned essence of being: absoluteness, necessity, totality. It is evident that of such boundaries, one cannot have but only an actuation. In this manner, the human soul, after having received directly from God ideal being as the light of reason, (something that absolutely is, without however being Absolute subsistence) through it, it ascends to God. It ascends with an act of reason.

Rosmini excludes ontologism, including that of Gioberti. Manifold, instead, is the actuation of being in improper terms, namely: relative, contingent, partial, the world of experience. These, contrary to proper terms, are the equivalent of limits placed on being. How do they actuated themselves? In themselves they have not the cause of existence. Nor has the "essence of being", dialectic base of their possibility, by its own impersonality, power of actuating them. From this, there is the necessity for the human mind to have recourse to the activity of the Absolute personal Being: the creation. But the manner with which those limits come inserted into virtual and initial being, and with it make a synthesis without, however, confusing themselves with it, remains a mystery. In any case, the theory of creation is inseparably bound up with the whole of ontology.

The views of Rosmini on mode of creation are original, and likewise also on the origin and immortality of the soul, on the connection of psychology with the principle of medicine, on the moral conscience, on aesthetics, on the science of beauty, on logic and dialectics in opposition to Hegel, on the interpretation of Aristotle and Plato regarding their influence on all of Philosophy etc..

Rational truths and those revealed coincide as to truth (manifestation of Being) but differentiate specifically by the diverse determination of the content and for the manner by which they come communicated to man. On the basis of rational cognitions and of natural life (in the act in which the soul is created by God) is the communication of being, all entire, in the "ideal form"; while as to "real being", man, by means of the subjective bodily sentiment can gather only certain limited actuations of it. On the other hand, on the basis of supernatural cognitions and life we have again the communication of being, but the Being of God, with the new faculty of perceiving it "initially", precisely as the full actuation of real Being.

In the light of nature is participated in man "an appurtenance of God" (something belonging to God); in the light of Grace, God Himself: God in His inseparable and ineffable whole, but not "totally". "Eternal life" is communicated to man only as beginning, open to a development, during earthly life, in which the free correspondence of man elevated to a new state enters.

Great importance is given to the sacred humanity of Christ as "means" of communication to man of "eternal life", and likewise, in the theory of the Sacraments, greatest stress in the intervention of that sacred humanity.

The Grace of the New Testament is considered as the connection to the mystery of the divine Trinity. As to original sin, Rosmini does not accept the theory that makes it consist solely in the privation of Grace. He includes there also a voluntary element, tied to the sinful will of Adam, but also proper to each man. In his psychology, Rosmini believed finding the data with which to render this thesis plausible.

He dedicated particular interest to the subject of the justification of Divine Providence in the creating and governing of the universe; whence his vast work on Theodicy.

(Translation from the Italian by Father Thomas Carleton)

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Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Note on the import of the doctrinal Decrees

concerning the thought and works

of the Priest Antonio Rosmini Serbati*

1. The Magisterium of the Church, which has the duty to promote and safeguard the doctrine of the faith and preserve it from the recurring dangers arising from certain currents of thought and from particular practices, on several occasions during the 19th century took an interest in the results of the intellectual work of the priest, Antonio Rosmini Serbati (1797-1855). It placed two of his works on the Index in 1849; then, after examination, dismissed his opera omnia in 1854; then, in 1887, with the doctrinal Decree Post Obitum emanating from the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office (Denz. 3201-3241), it condemned forty propositions drawn chiefly from posthumous works, as well as from other works edited during his lifetime.
2. A hasty and superficial reading of these various interventions could make the reader think that there was an intrinsic and objective contradiction on the part of the Magisterium in interpreting the contents of Rosminian thought and in evaluating them before the people of God. Nevertheless, a careful reading, not only of those texts but also of the context and of the situation in which they were promulgated, helps in grasping - granted also the necessary development - a watchful, coherent consideration aimed always and in every instance at safeguarding Catholic faith, and intent on not consenting to its mistaken or reductive interpretations. This present Note on the doctrinal import of the above mentioned Decrees follows the same line.
3. The Decree of 1854, which dismissed Rosmini's works, bears witness to the orthodoxy of his thought and to his explicitly stated intentions when two of his works were placed on the Index in 1849. He wrote to Blessed Pius IX: “I want to depend in everything on the authority of the Church, and I want the whole world to know that I adhere to this sole authority” (1). However, the Decree itself did not intend to signify the adoption on the part of the Magisterium of the system of Rosminian thought as a theological-philosophical tool of mediation of Christian doctrine, nor even to express any opinion about the speculative and theoretical plausibility of the positions of the author.
4. Events following the death of the Roveretan required a certain distancing from his system of thought and in particular from certain of its expressions. It is necessary to illuminate first of all the principal factors of a cultural and historical order which influenced such a distancing and culminated in the condemnation of the “Forty Propositions” found in the Decree Post Obitum of 1887.
A first factor concerns the project for renewal of ecclesiastical studies promoted by the Encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879) of Leo XIII, in line with fidelity to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The pontifical Magisterium saw the necessity of providing a philosophical and theoretical tool, indicated in Thomism and suitable for guaranteeing the unity of ecclesiastical studies against the risk of philosophical eclecticism, above all in the formation of priests in Seminaries and theological Faculties. This necessity posited the premisses for a negative judgment relative to a philosophical and speculative position, such as the Rosminian position, which differed through language and conceptual apparatus from the philosophical and theological elaboration of St. Thomas Aquinas.
A second factor to be kept in mind is that the condemned propositions were extracted for the most part from posthumous works of the author. The publication of these works was made without any critical apparatus suitable for explaining the precise sense of the expressions and concepts used in them. This favoured a heterodox interpretation of Rosminian thought, an interpretation which also resulted from the objective difficulty of interpreting its categories, especially if they are read from a neo-Thomist point of view.
5. Besides these factors dependent upon the historico-cultural and ecclesial contingency of the time, it is also necessary to recognise that ambiguous and equivocal concepts and expressions are sometimes found in the Rosminian system which require a careful interpretation and which can be clarified only in the light of the more general context of the author's work. For the rest, the ambiguity, equivocality and difficult comprehension of certain expressions and categories, present in the condemned propositions, explain, amongst other things, the interpretations in an idealistic, ontologistic and subjectivistic key given by non-Catholic thinkers, about which the Decree Post Obitum objectively put people on guard. Moreover, respect for historical truth requires that the important role played by the Decree of condemnation of the “Forty Propositions” be underlined and confirmed in so far as it has not only expressed the real concerns of the Magisterium against mistaken and deviant interpretations of Rosminian thought in contrast with Catholic faith, but has also foreseen what actually happened as Rosminianism was accepted in the intellectual sector of laicist philosophical culture, marked both by transcendental idealism and logical and ontological idealism. The profound coherence of the Magisterium's judgment in its various interpretations in such a matter is verified by the fact that the doctrinal Decree Post Obitum does not itself refer to judgment about formal denial of faith on the author's part but rather to the fact that Rosmini's philosophical and theological system was held to be insufficient and inadequate to safeguard and expound certain truths of Catholic doctrine, which were however acknowledged and professed by the author himself.
6. On the other hand, it has to be recognised that extensive, serious and rigorous scientific literature on the thought of Antonio Rosmini, expressed in the Catholic field by theologians and philosophers belonging to various schools of thought, has shown that such interpretations contrary to faith and Catholic doctrine do not correspond in reality to Rosmini's authentic position.
7. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as a result of a thorough examination of the two doctrinal Decrees promulgated in the 19th century and keeping in mind the results emerging from historiography and from scientific and theoretical research in the last decades, has come to the following conclusion:
The motives for concern and for doctrinal and prudential difficulties which determined the promulgation of the Decree Post Obitum condemning the “Forty Propositions” extracted from the works of Antonio Rosmini, can now be considered surmounted. This is motivated by the fact that the sense of the propositions, as understood and condemned by the same Decree, does not pertain in reality to Rosmini's authentic position, but to possible conclusions from the reading of his works.
Nevertheless, the question of the plausibility or not of the Rosminian system itself, of its speculative consistency and of the philosophical and theological theories or hypotheses expressed in it, continues to be entrusted to theoretical debate.
At the same time, the objective validity of the Decree Post Obitum relative to what is said in the condemned propositions remains for whoever reads them, outside the context of Rosminian thought, in an idealist, ontological perspective and with a meaning contrary to faith and to Catholic doctrine.
8. For the rest, the Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio of John Paul II, while listing Rosmini amongst various thinkers in whom a fruitful meeting between philosophical knowledge and the Word of God has been realised, adds at the same time that this indication is not intended “to support every aspect of their thought, but only to propose certain significant examples of a journey of philosophical research that has drawn considerable advantages from comparison with the data of faith” (2).
9. It must also be affirmed that Antonio Rosmini's speculative and intellectual undertaking - characterised by great audacity and courage, even though not without a certain risk and daring, especially in certain of its affirmations - has been carried out, in its endeavour to offer new opportunities to Catholic faith in relationship to the challenges of modern thought, within an ascetical and spiritual horizon, acknowledged even by his fiercest opponents, and has found expression in the works which accompanied the foundation of the Institute of Charity and that of the Sisters of Divine Providence.
The Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, during the audience of 8 June 2001 granted to the undersigned Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has approved this Note on the import of the doctrinal Decrees concerning the thought and works of the Priest Antonio Rosmini Serbati, decided in Ordinary Session, and has ordered its publication.

Rome, from the seat of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1st July 2001.

+JOSEPH, Cardinal RATZINGER

Prefect

+ TARCISIO BERTONE, S.D.B.

Archbishop Emeritus of Vercelli

Secretary

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(1) Antonio Rosmini, Letter to Pope Pius IX, in: Epistolario Completo, Casale Monferrato, tip. Pane 1892, vol. X, p. 541 (lett. 6341).
(2) John Paul II, Enc. Lett. Fides et Ratio, n. 74, in: AAS, XCI, 1999 - I, 62.

*(English translation by Fr. Denis Cleary)