Psychology

Foreword

This translation of Rosmini's Psychology has been carried through and sustained by the conviction that the work, first published in Italian in 1846-48 at Novara, has great practical relevance today. Such a judgement, applied to a book almost unknown in English- speaking countries, despite the existence of a previous English version by William Lockhart (London, 1884), needs solid justification. Some explanation must also be given of a number of words which have been difficult to translate from Rosmini's Italian.

A. The relevance of the work is best substantiated by Rosmini's own Preface, Introduction and Definitions which indicate immediately, at the very beginning of the book, a treatment of psychology almost unknown to the general reader in modern days. We are dealing, he says, with metaphysics, with a philosophical study devoted to the ultimate reasons for the existence and development of a reality called 'soul'.

Such an assertion gives rise almost inevitably to sceptical questions about the viability of the project, or even to out-of-hand rejection of the possibility of any genuine exploration along these lines. Today, and for some time now, it has been common ground amongst philosophers and others that soul and spirit can and must be consigned to the mental scrap-heap. Nevertheless, the classical problems remain: debate about life after death, about the relationship between soul and body, about the constitution of the human personality with its innate and acquired duties and rights persists and will persist as long as human beings exist. Human thought, if it is thought in any true sense of the word, must consider in depth whether life on earth is simply progress towards the grave or preparation for existence in a world beyond.

Rosmini's Psychology continues his A New Essay concerning the Origin of Ideas, where he dealt with the problem of knowledge, and his Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science, in which he considered the elements of human nature insofar as they are intimately connected with moral action; in it Rosmini attempts to consider globally all that can be said philosophically about human nature. This global consideration does not go beyond the limits imposed by human reason in its search for information about itself; it does not deal with life in the hereafter as it is presented by religious revelation. But it does set out the principles whose denial would make nonsense of revelation about a future life. If, in fact, there is no soul, statements about its existence in a world beyond have the same standing as answers to the once fashionable philosophical question: 'Is the present king of France bald?'

This is not the place to attempt a synopsis of Rosmini's study of the soul in its essence, its development and its laws. He himself has more than enough to say about these matters. Moreover, his method, which always offers admirable on-going summaries of what has been said or is yet to be said in various sections of his work, fulfills any need or synthesis. One example amongst many can be found in the following words:

Emphasis is needed, however, on Rosmini's approach to the study of psychology. He places the greatest importance on exhaustive observation of the content of self-perception. This content, observed at length and in surprising detail, becomes the standard according to which reasoning about the existence and nature of the soul may be judged. In other words, Rosmini is not constructing a 'model' which may or may not serve as a kind of paradigm for some hypothetical, incomplete science; he is, according to his own affirmation, indicating reflectively and reflexively the reality to which he and his readers can turn constantly as they analyse what they perceive, and bring together synthetically the results of their analysis. The true excitement of philosophy consists in coming back to the starting point, and seeing it anew. Chesterton's exuberant remark about his own method, and its consistent return from reflective to direct thought, is equally applicable to Rosmini's Psychology.

Recognising what we know about the soul through direct perception is not, however, as easy as returning to 'old South Wales'. 'Know yourself', in the sense of 'acknowledge what you already know of yourself', is difficult, and made more difficult by our imagining that we have already recognised ourselves sufficiently, due to our modern inability to concentrate closely on anything, and in particular through our ever-present incapacity to distance ourselves from the overlay of habits and customs which hide the depths within. The successful philosophical psychologist is like an archaeologist engaged in aerial photography: he shows from above what has been trampled underfoot for thousands of years.

Philosophically speaking, the difficulty of sufficiently accurate observation in psychology is overcome by adherence to two simple, yet profound principles enunciated by Rosmini in his A New Essay concerning the Origin of Ideas (vol. 2, 26-27).

First:

Second:

Rosmini follows these principles throughout his Psychology. If this is kept in mind, the reader has a key with which to unlock the many difficult passages presented by the work.

B. Mention must also be made, as we said, about difficulties of vocabulary inherent in the translation of this work. Besides the normal obstacles associated with Rosmini's wordiness and erudition, specific problems of translation have arisen in Psychology through his use either of words which he coined in Italian or of words which cannot be put into English without placing great strain on the language. The translators feel that many of these difficulties have been overcome, and present no further problem in English. Five words, however, require special explanation if enigmas and irritation are to be avoided. In Italian, these words are: ente, organato, intestino, sensilità and tocco.

Ente

The straightforward translation of ente (present participle) is 'being'. Italian, however, like Latin, has another word, essere (infinitive) (Latin: esse) which is also translated as 'being' in English. But when both words are expressed as 'being', the subtle, and not so subtle, differences in meaning between ente and essere are lost in translation, despite their importance in the original text. These differences are often overlooked, of course, even by native Italians, not all of whom are philosophers. On one occasion, Rosmini wrote to his proof reader, rather sharply it must be said:

The multiple differences in meaning between the two Italian words cannot be fully explained here. It is sufficient to state that Rosmini's use of ente is dealt with under forty-seven separate entries in Bergomaschi's immense Dizionario antologico del pensiero di Antonio Rosmini (CD-Rom, Centro Internazionale di Studi Rosminiani, Stresa, 1998). One example, however, will be especially useful.

Niccolò Tommaseo, the great Italian lexicographer, had included an article on ente and essere in his Dizionario dei Sinonomi. Writing to him about this, Rosmini elucidated his own understanding of the words:

In a note to this letter, Rosmini comments on De Divinis Nominibus:

It is clear from these illustrations that the use of 'being' to indicate both ente and essere would at best confuse and at worse mislead the reader. We have, therefore, used the word ens (plural: entia) to translate the Italian ente, and reserved 'being' to translate essere. A tenuous support for this practice will be found in the Oxford English Dictionary under the entry ens, although the exact meaning of the word in Psychology will have to be taken from its use in context rather than from explanations given in OED.

Organato.

There is no support, however, for the use of 'organated' as a translation of the Italian organato. Organato is not a current word in Italian, nor was it current in Rosmini's day. It was minted by Rosmini to indicate a state of affairs to which, according to him, he was drawing attention for the first time. The best introduction to his use of this word, and the root from which it springs, is found in his Teosofia.

In other words, 'organism', 'organisation', 'organated', and other words etymologically related to them, often have a much wider use for Rosmini than their present-day application, even in Italian. He speaks, for example, of the 'ontological organism of an ens', a phrase intended to designate the 'intrinsic order of the ens' (ibid., p. 104). If this is kept in mind, 'organated' in English will help the reader to understand that even in relationship to the living body, Rosmini is not considering simply the bodily organs but the body with its multiplicity insofar as this multiplicity does not detract from its unity.

Intestino

Rosmini uses this word adjectivally in the sense of 'internal' rather than in its modern, substantive meaning of 'intestine'. His obvious preference for intestino rather than interno when referring to elements related in some way to sensation has been respected by our use of 'intestine' as an adjective, a revival of an archaic usage which we hope will be understood as a suitable solution when seen in context.

Sensilità

This is another word coined by Rosmini and transcribed by us into English to express a notion necessary to Rosmini's philosophy, but scarcely referred to by others. For him, the animal feeling principle, or soul, is undoubtedly unextended. At the same time, what is felt, the term of feeling, is often extended. 'Sensility' describes the relationship between the unextended feeling principle and its extended term.

Rosmini acknowledges that he has invented a new word for his purposes.

We have tried to respect his new use of language.

Tocco

Here again Rosmini states clearly that he has 'invented a word' (Teosofia, vol. 6, chap. 50, p. 81). In this case, he wished to express the variation arising in sensation (sensazione) or feeling (sentimento) from the action on the sentient principle of one being (essere) rather than another. The distinction in 'touch' or 'feel' between one kind of sensation and another (sight differing from hearing), and between sensations of the same kind (different qualities of sound, for example) is what he has in mind. But by using tocco in this sense, Rosmini was adapting an already existing word to his purposes rather than inventing a new one. Our own conclusion is that we can achieve his aim in English by using the word 'feel', which is already employed in a non-philosophical sense to indicate something similar to tocco. We speak, for instance, of 'the feel of a painting' when we mean to express its total effect upon us in contradistinction to that experienced when we contemplate other works by the same artist or by different artists. To avoid possible ambiguities, however, we have consistently used 'feel' in inverted commas to translate Rosmini's tocco. An example will be helpful:

DENIS CLEARY
TERENCE WATSON

Durham,
March, 1999

Essence of the Human Soul - Translated from Psicologia Critical edition, vol. 9, Stresa, 1989.
Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used with permission.

Note

Square brackets [ ] indicate notes or additions by the translators.
References to this and other works of Rosmini are given by paragraph number unless otherwise stated.

Asterisk * indicates omission of Greek text.

Abbreviations used for Rosmini's quoted works are:
AMS: Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science
CS: Conscience
ER: The Essence of Right, vol. 1 of The Philosophy of Right
NE: A New Essay concerning the Origin of Ideas
PE: Principles of Ethics