Gian Domenico Romagnosi (1761-1835) is personality of Association of Bologna in the Italian jurisprudence between the Seven and 1800's. Its work, in the renewal of the European legal thought that s' it interlaces with the French Revolution and the advent of the napoleonica coding, closely is tied to the foundation of one new science of the public right and in particular of the criminal law and the administrative right. It can be said that its doctrine is one of the clearer manifestations of the settecentesco scientific spirit, turned to assert a fundamental unit of method for moral sciences (between which the continuous right to occupy a place of Association of Bologna) and for sciences of the nature. It is not a case that celebre the experiment on the galvanism, around to which Sandro Stringari of recent has carried new light, is completed to Rovereto, in the collected intellectual atmosphere around the Roveretana Academy of the Wealthy ones, that is in a society of men of letters that to leave from years ' 50 of the 1700's they love to debate with the same intensity issues of right, philosophy, language and literature therefore like of physical sciences, mathematical and natural. Enciclopedista spirit, Romagnosi must to its decade to Trento and in the Italian Tirolo the occasions for the maturation of its intellectual dress and its work of investigator of the natural phenomena, giurista and political thinker. Romagnosi, than had been addottorato to Parma, reached Trento in 1791 in order to occupy the pretore office, then of duration anniversary and not immediately rinnovabile, in compliance with charter (the previous year had already forwarded question to the consular magistrate, but then it the modenese Valdrighi was preferred). Its mandate was not free from contrasts with the last bishop-prince of Trento, conte Peter Vigilio Thun; these however, to the escape from the office of pretore, granted the title it of aulic councilman of honor. Romagnosi remained therefore to Trento and exercised the profession of legal adviser, although, in how much forestiero, it it was precluso the exercise of the legal profession. After the entrance of the French to Trento, in 1796, and with the successive passage of the city under the Austrian administrative council, Romagnosi was found exposed to the activity suspicion spin-revolutionaries and between 1798 and 1800 formally were accused of high tradimento and imprisoned, coming then but acquitted. Finally nel 1801, with the third French occupation della city, he divenne secretary del higher council presided dal giurista Carl Antonio Pilati. Romagnosi left therefore Trento in order to dedicate itself to the university instruction and an intense pubblicistica activity, sure between most meaningful in the first years of the restoration.
Written its first political-legal ones, dedicate to you to the equality concepts and of freedom, they go back exactly at the beginning of the Trentino decade, therefore like its Genesis of the criminal law, of 1791, in which the tendency can be already seen to set up its geometric "more" doctrine (today would say with rational-systematic method), method that one completed expression in the Introduction to a study of the public right would have found then universaland (1805). Its "civil philosophy", that is its general theory of the public right, ago of he one of the more important and recognized theoretical giuristi of the modern age. Gian Domenico Romagnosi is famous mainly for its legal and political-social studies. Little know instead that she was protagonist, in 1802, of a experiment of physics who could have influenced in deep way the development of science, anticipating of several years the discovery of electromagnetism. Romagnosi had been attracted from the studies experiences them the juvenile years since when he was student of the Alberoni college of Piacenza. But it was during the Trentino stay that conceived the idea of a revolutionary experiment for the age: the experiment headed to demonstrate that one current electrical worker produces the shunting line of the magnetic needle. Electromagnetism is one of the scientific discoveries more important of last the two centuries, point of departure of the development of the advanced technologies more that we use daily, included the computer and the most sophisticated systems than telecommunication. To the base of electromagnetism there is the fundamental fact that the phenomena magnetic electrical workers and are not independent and separate to you from the other, but are instead intrinsically couples to you. This is, as an example, the principle base of the propagation of the light. Before 1820, official year of the discovery of electromagnetism for work of the Danish physicist Oersted, the scientific world ignored the existence of this logon. The fact is therefore extraordinary that Romagnosi, very 18 years before and only 2 years after the invention of the battery of Time, has had the idea to demonstrate to the tie between the phenomena magnetic electrical workers and. Romagnosi realized the experiment to Trento in May 1802 and published its turns out to you on newspapers of Trento and Rovereto. It tried also to introduce its job to international level, sending copy of its article to the Academy of Sciences of Paris, where Napoleone Bonaparte had instituted a prestigious prize for the searches on the phenomena electrical workers. Unfortunately the scientific community did not lend much attention to the job of Romagnosi. In the 1830 Oersted it wrote on the Encyclopedia of Edinburgo that "the acquaintance of the jobs of Romagnosi would have anticipated the discovery of electromagnetism of 18 years". This meaningful acknowledgment of the importance of the intuition of Romagnosi does not explain but because its job nearly remained in the shadow in order vent' years. Recently they have been finds ulterior documents that they partially make light you on that period of history, in particular an article published on the "Gazette of Rovereto" and the relative documentation in the participation to the competition of Paris.
Eclectic figure of thinker, Romagnosi was always courageous supporter of the fundamental principles of freedom. It is an honor for the community some thirty to number it between its illustrious citizens and for our University to make of symbol of intellectual engagement and reference for the new generations of investigators.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT

The review of "the illuministica" gnoseologia had place, in Giandomenico Romagnosi (1761-1835), under the immediate stimulus of the topics, by now circulating also in Italy, of the "ideologia".

Italy, in fact, is, in this period, under the infuence of the French philosophical culture, sped up equally from the topics of the "tradizionalista and spiritualista movement", than ripresentano nearly in faithful way to it also originates them in the speculations of the greater Italian thinkers of the same current (even if places in a new and various systematic context), and from the "movement of the ideologi", than exactly present above all in northern Italy made itself.

Of Romagnosi, student in the first giovinezza of the Alberoni College of Piacenza, in which the philosophical instruction he was lead on the topics of the sensismo, then university professor in the University of Pavia and Parma, is from remembering the legal works Genesis of criminal law (1791), Introduction to the study of universal public right (1805), and those political-philosophical ones Of the constitution of a representative national monarchy (1815), Than cos' it is the healthy mind? (1827), Of the supreme economy of the human to know in relation to healthy mind (1828), Seen on the logical art ( 1832) and theoretical Jurisprudence fundamental that is Institutions of civil philosophy (published posthumous in 1839). He is unquestionable, supports the Romagnosi, than the matter of every acquaintance it comes from the senses. But it is also true that the feeling, for himself, is not still acquaintance. This has place when the intelletto takes part that it orders to the feelings second own fundamental relationships its. Therefore it has twisted in some measure the sensismo when it reduces the sensitive acquaintance to the simple "recording" of the feeling; and in some way the rationalism has reason when it supports that the intelletto it is active giving to the feelings of the shapes that they do not contain in himself. Therefore the acquaintance is born from the "compotenza", that is from the sense competition and intelletto, or, com' it says, of "external sense" and "logical sense". In fact the feelings become meaningful when they come second ordered the logical concepts of agency, unit, shape, number, succession and permanence, uniformità and discrepancy, etc. These concepts, than Romagnosi it defines "logie", are "intimate emissions"; in the cognitive action they do not derive from the outside, but they come from the same inside of the spirit, in how much are own ways with which the spirit it gives "signatures rations them" to the "positive signatures", that is to the sensory impressions.

As Kant he perceives that these concepts are not innate ideas; they not damage "a priori" acquaintance, that is to prescind from the sensitive impressions, but only in competition with the experience. Therefore, other acquaintance does not exist who that one "a posteriori", that one whose contained he is empiricist. However the acquaintance empiricist is not objective, is not acquaintance of the truth. Unquestionably she has Condillac reason: the external senses do not give acquaintance to us of the things, but of that we perceive of the things, of the phenomena of the things. Insomma we know the subjective rappresentazioni that same we form ourselves of the things: the "senses" offer the matter of the rappresentazione and the "logical sense" orders those relations second to it, second those shapes of organization that the same knowing subject possesses. Outside of the subject it is not gone neither can be gone.

But for how much it emphasizes the affinity of its position with Condillac, in order much Romagnosi tries to disguise the obvious consonanza of its theses with those of Kant.

To Kant it objects that the shapes "a priori" are not "transcendental"; they are not connaturate to the thought; they have one genesis in the spirit. Also not being experience fruit, they are turns out you of an inductive process graduates them that the thought has operated on the experience empiricist. They are "a priori", insomma, regarding the feelings puts into effect them, but they also have origin and roots always in the last experience.

Moreover it emphasizes also that the acquaintance about which speaks is "fenomenica", but not in kantiano sense. It is true, he supports, the phenomena are not faithful reproductions of the real one. However from this costatazione Kant she has concluded erroneously that of the real one some acquaintance does not have itself; erroneously because cosí the acquaintance is not other that arbitrary creation of the intelletto; and therefore the kantiana work to dissipate the skepticism is been shipwrecked. If but the phenomena are not copies of the real one, they however are also always "natural signs"; sicché the rappresentazioni are the mental correspondents of the things and their ways to be, and not "figmenti ours".

It is worth the pain remembering, however, than Romagnosi, acute talent, not esaurí its interests in the philosophical job, as s' it is seen from the titles them of its banns. It also dedicated itself to the study of the social life, in all its legal, political, economic, moral, historical members () and in its laws of development. In this study it considered the man, evidently, not in its individuality, but not even in its separated universalità; these two ways to talk of the man are scientifically sterile. It must consider it instead in the ways and the concrete shapes of its historical existence, in the ways and the shapes in which he concretely it thinks and it acts; that he means also that the man cannot scientifically be studied without that the relations to the social context and the historical context in which he he is of inserted fact. Only in such a way the study of the history of the man is revealed like the study of the history of its "progressive incivilimento".

The thought of Romagnosi widely was contested from the spiritualisti metaphysicians, and especially from the Rosmini, than, evidently, it could not accept the cognitive soggettivismo, that is the declared impossibility that the mind knows the real one in himself, cosí com' is. But the "metaphysical reaction" riuscí not to dissolve the echo produced from the positions of Romagnosi, than indeed found convinced acceptation and adapted development in the thought of its disciples. Above all promoted the inventiveness of its follows its appeal to us to consider the man in its social context, what that constituted the first testimony of the rubble opened from the European positivisti on the Italian intellectuals of formulation, for cosí saying, lay.

And especially the Cattaneo received its invites to consider the "positive signatures" the only matter of acquaintance, and, above all, to study the stona of the human "incivilimento" to leave from the "empirically noticeable facts". With that the true "positivistico" tradition in the Italian philosophy of the 1800's had beginning; or, it can also be said, with that the critical reflection on the illuministico sensismo ended up in the positivistica conception of the truth and the history.

With the Ferrari, then, the teorizzazione of the necessity of one was had "positive spirit" like indispensable condition for the creation of one new, modern society.