Francesco Bonatelli

Francesco Bonatelli (1830-1911) was a 19th-century Italian philosopher of the Roman Catholic spiritualist tradition.

He was also one of the principal editors of Filosofia delle scuole italiane, a review founded in 1870 by Terenzio Mamiani which was dedicated to defending a Platonizing position.

However, he resigned in 1874 when the Platonist Giovanni Maria Bertini published criticisms of Catholicism that Bonatelli considered too bold.

He was responsible for the introduction the analytic method of German psychologists Johann Friedrich Herbart and Rudolf Hermann Lotze into Italy.

He placed Man at the center of his philosophical thought and defended Idealism against the philosophies of Positivism and Materialism that were growing in popularity in the 19th century.