Italian philosophy
University cities such as Padua, Bologna and Naples remained centres of scholarship and the intellect, with several philosophers such as Giambattista Vico (widely regarded as being the founder of modern Italian philosophy)[4] and Antonio Genovesi.
During the late 19th and 20th centuries, there were also several other movements which gained some form of popularity in Italy, such as Ontologism (whose main philosopher was Vincenzo Gioberti),[5] anarchism, communism, socialism, futurism, fascism and Christian democracy.
Italian philosophers were also influential in the development of the non-Marxist liberal socialism philosophy, including Carlo Rosselli, Norberto Bobbio, Piero Gobetti and Aldo Capitini.
"Like other Sophists, he was an itinerant that practiced in various cities and giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and performances.
Interest in philosophy was first excited at Rome in 155 BC, by an Athenian embassy consisting of the Academic skeptic Carneades, the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon, and the Peripatetic Critolaus.
Peter's most enduring contribution to medieval thought was the Sententiae in IV libris distinctae (Four Books of Sentences, 1155–7), a systematic investigation of the whole range of questions that arise under the topic now designated ‘theology’.
"[24] His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy is derived from his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory.
The Catholic Church honors Thomas Aquinas as a saint and regards him as the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood, and indeed the highest expression of both natural reason and speculative theology.
[25] Next to Aquinas ranks Bonaventure, perhaps the foremost Franciscan theologian of the 13th century, whose only real rival, in terms of immediate and ultimate influence, is the Scottish Duns Scotus.
While Siger of Brabant and Boetius of Dacia, defended an Aristotle tainted with Averroism and Thomas Aquinas tried to give the Philosopher a theologically acceptable interpretation, Bonaventure moved in completely different way.
In works such as Breviloquium or De triplici via, Bonaventure describes theology as wisdom (sapientia) rather than science (scientia) and considers its main task to be the achievement of spiritual perfection.
By the mid-15th century humanism described a curriculum – the studia humanitatis – consisting of grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry, and history as studied via Latin and Greek literary authors.
[28] Giorgio Valla's 1498 Latin translation of Aristotle's text (the first to be published) was included with the 1508 Aldine printing of the Greek original as part of an anthology of Rhetores graeci.
In the baroque period Emanuele Tesauro, with his Cannocchiale aristotelico, re-presented to the world of post-Galilean physics Aristotle's poetic theories as the sole key to approaching the human sciences.
Machiavelli is aware of the irony of good results coming from evil actions, and because of this, the Catholic Church proscribed The Prince, registering it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, moreover, the Humanists also viewed the book negatively, among them, Erasmus of Rotterdam.
Cities with important universities such as Padua, Bologna and Naples, however, also remained great centres of scholarship and the intellect, with several philosophers such as Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) (who is widely regarded as being the founder of modern Italian philosophy)[4] and Antonio Genovesi.
The most comprehensive view of Rosmini's philosophical standpoint is to be found in his Sistema filosofico, in which he set forth the conception of a complete encyclopaedia of the human knowable, synthetically conjoined, according to the order of ideas, in a perfectly harmonious whole.
A young fellow-exile and friend, Paolo Pallia, having many doubts and misgivings as to the reality of revelation and a future life, Gioberti at once set to work with La Teorica del sovrannaturale, which was his first publication (1838).
Civilization is a conditioned mediate tendency to perfection, to which religion is the final completion if carried out; it is the end of the second cycle expressed by the second formula, the Ens redeems existences.
It was the popularity of these semi-political works, increased by other occasional political articles, and his Rinnovamento civile d'Italia, that caused Gioberti to be welcomed with such enthusiasm on his return to his native country.
[45] In the mid-19th century, interest in scholastic thought began once again to flourish, in large part in reaction against the Modernism inspired by thinkers such as René Descartes, Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel, whose principles were perceived to conflict with Christian dogma.
"[47] The influential German Jesuit Joseph Kleutgen (1811–83), who taught at Rome, argued that post-Cartesian philosophy undermined Catholic theology, and that its remedy was the Aristotelian scientific method of Aquinas.
His treatise La psicologia come scienza positiva (1870) is an important contribution to the birth of modern European psychology, showing the influence of Darwin and John Stuart Mill and proposing that psychic phenomena depend on physiological ones.
Some of the most prominent philosophies and ideologies in Italy during the late 19th and 20th centuries included anarchism, communism, socialism, futurism, fascism, idealism, and Christian democracy.
[50] Therefore, Gentile proposed a form of what he called 'absolute Immanentism' in which the divine was the present conception of reality in the totality of one's individual thinking as an evolving, growing and dynamic process.
Other Italian figures influential in both the anarchist and socialist movements include Carlo Tresca and Andrea Costa, as well as the author, director, and intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini.
21st century post-marxist philosophers include Giorgio Agamben and Antonio Negri.In the 1960s, many Italian left-wing activists adopted the anti-authoritarian pro-working class leftist theories that would become known as autonomism and operaismo.
Cornelio Fabro (1911–95), made major scholarly contributions to the study of Aquinas, drewing attention to Platonic elements in Thomism (such as ‘participation’), later an emphasis for Anglican Thomists such as Mascall and figures associated with the Radical Orthodoxy movement.
Montessori developed her theories in the early 20th century through scientific experimentation with her students; the method has since been used in many parts of the world, in public and private schools alike.
Recent Italian analytic philosophers, many of whom work abroad, include Evandro Agazzi, Francesco Berto, Claudia Bianchi, Cristina Bicchieri, Emiliano Boccardi, Roberto Casati, Annalisa Coliva, Franca D'Agostini, Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara, Mauro Dorato, Luciano Floridi, Pieranna Garavaso, Aldo Gargani, Giulio Giorello, Luca Incurvati, Lorenzo Magnani, Diego Marconi, Michela Massimi, Luca Moretti, Gloria Origgi, Carlo Penco, Marcello Pera, Eva Picardi, Gualtiero Piccinini, Stefano Predelli, Marina Sbisà, Alessandra Tanesini, Alessandro Torza, Laura Valentini, Achille Varzi, and Nicla Vassallo.
