Luigi Stefanini

Luigi Stefanini
Born	November 3, 1891 Treviso, Italy
Died	January 16, 1956 Padua, Italy
Occupation	Philosopher

Luigi Stefanini (3 November 1891 – 16 January 1956) was an Italian philosopher and pedagogue.

Biography

He was born in Treviso, the second son of four siblings, into a Catholic family whose father Giovanni ran a dry cleaning business, while his mother Lucia de Mori, an elementary school teacher, devoted herself entirely to the home and the care of her children.

From a young age, he was active in Catholic associations and movements in the Treviso area, joining Catholic Youth, where he would soon take on the role of diocesan president. Here he matured his vocation as an educator, following, in particular, the teachings contained in Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum novarum. He also served in the Catholic Workers' Union.

After graduating from the Liceo Classico Antonio Canova in 1910, where he had Paolo Rotta as a history and philosophy teacher among others, he enrolled in the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Padua in the same year. In the University of Padua, the current of positivism was one of the most popular, but in contrast, Stefanini decided to write his thesis on Maurice Blondel, setting out his criticism of the French philosopher's work, having Antonio Aliotta as his supervisor, with whom he graduated in philosophy in 1914. During his studies in Padua, he also began attending Giacomo Zanella's Catholic university circle and, immediately after graduating, began teaching in public schools.

While he completed his university studies, the air of war already began to breathe in Italy, but like many young Catholics, although he favoured a position of neutrality towards the war, he was nevertheless called to arms in 1915. Once the conflict was over and he came out of it with the rank of captain and a cross for war merit, he also obtained a second degree in literature from the University of Padua in 1919, with a thesis on the aesthetic thought of Gian Vincenzo Gravina, as well as resuming teaching in schools.

In 1920, he was elected councillor of the Municipality of Treviso but, in 1921, fascist squadrismo invaded the Treviso area as well. Stefanini firmly opposed this ideology, highlighting the irreconcilability of Christianity and Fascism. He resigned in 1922 and dedicated himself completely to teaching. During the same period, he devoted himself diligently to the drafting of popular teaching texts on history and philosophy, as well as pedagogy according to a Christian orientation.

In 1925, he was appointed to teach this discipline at the University of Padua and married Maria Javicoli, by whom he had three children, Elena, Paolo and Lucia. In those years, as well as joining the National Fascist Party, he combined teaching in state schools with teaching at university until 1936 when, having won the Ordinaria, he was given a chair in the History of Philosophy at the Faculty of Education at the University of Messina, which he held until 1938 when he moved to Padua, to the chair of Pedagogy, and then to that of the History of Philosophy in 1940, which he held until his premature death in 1956. At the same time, he held the chair of Aesthetics at Padua and the chair of Pedagogy at the University of Venice, as well as being Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Padua for the three-year period 1941–1943.

In the post-war period, having been rehabilitated to his professorship and university teaching, he devoted himself mainly to study and research, but also participated in the reorganisation of Italian Catholic philosophy, in particular by promoting meetings, conventions and gatherings at the Aloisianum Institute of the Jesuit fathers in Gallarate, which would later become the Gallarate Centre for Philosophical Studies, first directed by Carlo Gianon.

A corresponding member of the Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, as well as a full member of the Accademia patavina di scienze, lettere ed arti, he received the prize of the Royal Academy of Italy in 1933 for philosophical disciplines, and the Marzotto Prize for philosophy in 1953, as well as being a member of the boards of the Società filosofica italiana and the Centro Studi filosofici di Gallarate. In 1956 he went on to found the Rivista di estetica in Padua, of which he was only able to edit the first issue of the 1956 edition, and which was succeeded by Luigi Pareyson. His students include Armando Rigobello, Giovanni Santinello, Ezio Riondato and Giovanni M. Pozzo.

Luigi Stefanini died in Padua. State secondary schools in Treviso and Padua, as well as the former teacher training college in Mestre, are named after him.

Thought

Stefanini was one of the most important Italian philosophers of Christian inspiration and one of the leading representatives of Christian spiritualism. Always starting from Christian philosophy, he historically and critically re-examined various currents of philosophical thought, including historicism, the philosophy of action, neo-idealism, phenomenology and existentialism, throughout the history of philosophy, from the ancients (including Plato, St. Augustine, Bonaventure, St. Thomas), to the moderns (Vincenzo Gioberti, Maurice Blondel, Antonio Rosmini and others), in the wake of his early youthful education centred on a close connection between historical perspective and theoretical dimension.

Also interested in aesthetics, on which he has written many works, Stefanini's most important contribution is the result of his constant reflection on personalism and spiritualism, thanks to which the subject-object relationship is interpreted in terms of otherness, of something other than oneself, a perspective — this one — that will allow the individual to be conceived as a member of a community. This subject-object relationship, from such a point of view, will be conceived as the founding moment of every community of human beings in relation to one another. The most important issues related to these basic principles will then be addressed by Stefanini in his two fundamental works Metaphysics of the Person (1950) and Social Personalism (1952).

Closely connected to these philosophical themes, then, are the didactic-pedagogical ones opened up and pursued by Stefanini practically throughout his entire period of activity, from his early formative years to the last of his maturity, in continuous rethinking and progressive revision.

As far as his extensive scholarly production is concerned, let us only recall that, in the period between 1940 and 1950, he published the following notable works: The Existentialism of M. Heidegger (1944), Christian Spiritualism (1944), Gioberti (1947), The Philosophical Drama of Germany (1948), Metaphysics of the Person and Other Essays (1950), Atheistic Existentialism and Theistic Existentialism (1952), Social Personalism (1952), Aesthetics (1953), Treatise on Aesthetics (1955); the collection of writings entitled Philosophical Personalism (1956) was then published posthumously.

Major publications

• Il problema della conoscenza in Cartesio e Gioberti (1925)
• Il problema religioso in Platone e S. Bonaventura. Sommario storico e critica di testi (1926)
• Idealismo cristiano (1931)
• Platone (1932–1935; 2 volumes; 1991)
• Il problema estetico in Platone (1933)
• Imaginismo come problema filosofico (1936)
• Problemi attuali d'arte (1939)
• La Chiesa Cattolica (1944)
• Vincenzo Gioberti. Vita e pensiero (1947)
• Metafisica dell'arte e altri saggi (1948)
• La mia prospettiva filosofica (1950; 1996)
• Esistenzialismo ateo ed esistenzialismo teistico. Esposizione e critica costruttiva (1952)
• Estetica (1953)
• Trattato di Estetica, Vol. I: L'arte nella sua autonomia e nel suo processo (1955; 1960)
• Personalismo educativo (1955)

References

AA.VV. (1991). Dialettica dell'immagine. Studi sull'imaginismo di Luigi Stefanini. Genova.

Baring, Edward (2009). Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Burgos, Juan Manuel (2018). An Introduction to Personalism. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

Caimi, Luciano (1985). Educazione e persona in Luigi Stefanini. Brescia: Editrice La Scuola.

Calò, Giovanni (1957). "Luigi Stefanini," Revue Internationale de l'Education, Vol. III, No. 1, pp. 120–21.

Cappello, Glory (2006). Luigi Stefanini. Dalle opere e dal carteggio del suo archivio. Treviso: Europrint.

Cappello, Glory (2012). Per una antropologia in Luigi Stefanini: metafisica, personalismo, umanesimo. Padova: Edizioni R. Pagotto.

Chaix-Ruy, Jules (1956). "Luigi Stefanini," Archives de Philosophie, Nouvelle Série, Vol. XIX, No. 4, pp. 132–34.

Corrieri, Laura (2002). Luigi Stefanini: Un pensiero attuale. Milano: Prometheus.

De Boni, Matteo (2017). Le ragioni dell’esistenza. Esistenzialismo e ragione in Luigi Stefanini. Milano-Udine: Mimesis Edizioni.

Gregoretti, Paolo (1983). Persona ed essere: Saggio sul personalismo di Luigi Stefanini. Trieste: Università di Trieste: Facoltà di scienze politiche.

Piaia, Gregorio (2009). "Tra Militanza Cattolica, Ricerca Filosofica e Politica Accademica. Una Biografia su Luigi Stefanini," Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, Vol. LXIV, No. 3, pp. 513–20.

Piaia, Gregorio (2019). "Stefanini, Luigi." In: Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 94. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

Rigobello, Armando (1960). Scritti in onore di Luigi Stefanini. Padova: Liviana editrice.

Silli, Flavia (2005). Stefanini interprete di Blondel. Milano: Prometheus.

Stella, Vittorio (1961). "Stefanini, Luigi." In: Enciclopedia Italiana, III Appendice. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

External links

• Official website
• Works by Luigi Stefanini at JSTOR