Antonio Rosmini-Serbati

Born Mar. 25, 1797, in Ro-vereto; died July 1, 1855, in Stresa. Italian philosopher and theologian; public and church figure.

Ordained in 1821, Rosmini graduated from the University of Padua in 1822. He was an active participant in the movement for the unification of Italy (the Risorgimento). Rosmini’s Of the Five Wounds of the Holy Church, which contained a program for liberal constitutional reforms, was put on the papal Index of Forbidden Books in 1849.

In philosophy Rosmini was responsible for the most influential attempt in Catholicism—aside from neo-Thomism—to use Platonist and Augustinian positions to master the problems of modern European philosophy, especially those raised by German classical idealism and, above all, by I. Kant. Rosmini reduced the Kantian a priori forms of knowledge to an innate idea of potential existence that comes from god and makes all knowledge possible. For Rosmini the epistemological problem becomes the foundation for the proof of the existence of god (The Origin of Ideas, 1830).

In the 20th century, Rosmini’s ideas have served as a source of Christian spiritualism, an idealist philosophical current that is especially influential in Italy, where M. F. Sciacca is among its main proponents.