In the first chapter we will consider the nature of the problem of knowledge, namely: “What does it mean to know?” Epistemology deals with this question and seeks to establish the different kinds of knowledge. My main interest here instead will be to attain the formal element of human knowledge: that is, what makes the mind capable of understanding. This is neither the act of knowledge as originating in the knowing subject nor the thing known, but rather what stands for the thing before the mind. The classical topic of the representation would come into play here, but our purpose...

A good way to gain an adequate understanding of Rosmini’s work is to make clear the meaning of the terms object and objectivity. It is not merely a matter of words, since other words could be used, provided that the meaning remains unaltered. If what Rosmini calls object received another name in other thinkers, the only task would be to indicate the equivalence between the corresponding expressions. But if there is no or almost no equivalent in other philosophers, the clarification of this term takes on a high philosophical significance and not merely a philological or semantic one. It is...

We have seen in the previous chapter that the first and most important problem of philosophy is the problem of knowledge. To establish the nature and reach of our ideas, which make knowledge possible, is philosophy’s first task. The question of how a thing becomes an object of knowledge is another way of formulating the same problem. Sensations constitute our direct contact with the real material world, but due to their characteristics, they cannot be called objects of thought, they cannot explain the presence of a thing to the intellect. If we were restricted to sensations, no intellectual knowledge would...

An important question that needs to be answered is whether the idea of being allows us to know things as they are without imposing an alien form on them. When a thing becomes an object of thought, does it receive a form it did not have before? Does this form alter the thing? In other words: can we rely on the idea of being as a means of objective knowledge?

Before giving a direct answer to these questions, which clearly represent the same difficulty, I want to warn the reader against a misunderstanding. The idea of being does not enter...

In the Nuovo saggio Rosmini speaks about the “idea of being” (idea dell’essere), but in his ontological writings he prefers the expression “ideal being.”¹ This does not follow any change in his theory of being; it just reflects a different approach. In fact, he had already concluded in his philosophy of knowledge that there was another form of being, apart from the real one: namely, ideal being.² His aim there, however, was not to develop an ontological teaching.³ How can we characterize this mode of existence, which is called ideal or objective?

Although Rosmini dedicated many pages to the objective...

When we intuit being, we do not yet attribute ideality to it. It is only when we compare it with real things that we call it ideal. We find it is indeterminate, “not in itself, but relative to contingent realities.”¹ “If it were not an object of our mind, we could not reason about it.”² “It is [then] seen as common to all objects of thought.”³ It is called logical because “it shows no subsistence outside the mind.”⁴ Moreover, “the most universal idea of all … is possible being.”⁵ If we consider that it “has the susceptibility to receive different...