Vincenzo Lilla
Vincenzo Lilla (13 June 1837 – 30 November 1905) was an Italian philosopher, jurist and presbyter.
Contents
Biography
Born at Francavilla Fontana, a comune in the province of Brindisi, he was trained in the local school of the Scolopi Fathers. From a young age he adhered to the liberal Catholic ideas disseminated by the thinkers of the first half of the nineteenth century: Gioberti, Minghetti, Balbo and Antonio Rosmini, to whom he dedicated many studies and was greatly influenced by them.
He took minor orders at the age of eighteen and left Francavilla in 1863 because of the obstinate opposition of all the clergy of Francavilla to his patriotic ideas of Giobertian inspiration, openly manifested in the Program of philosophical teaching published in the newspaper Cittadino Leccese, he decided to move to Naples where, attending the university, he had the opportunity to confront himself with the ideas of Francesco De Sanctis, Bertrando Spaventa, Luigi Settembrini, Antonio Tari and Augusto Vera.
As soon as he graduated, he obtained the teaching of philosophy in the College of San Carlo alle Mortelle, in the College of the German Liebler and in the Martineli High School, later founding, together with other teachers and assuming the direction, the Rosmini High School in Naples. During these years saw the light of his first works, Providence and freedom considered in civilization, God and the world, and The original personality and the derived personality in which he laid the groundwork for philosophical and legal studies in which he will engage for the rest of his life: The History of Philosophy, Theoretical Philosophy, and Philosophy of Law; also developing and anticipating a modern conception of the relationship between "human rights and scientific progress" since The Science and Life, the paradigmatic title of the monograph given to the presses in 1870.
Subsequently, ordained priest, he became professor of Legal Encyclopedia and Philosophy of Law at the University of Naples and from 1885 holder of the chair of Philosophy of Law at the University of Messina, where he was dean from 1894 until his death. Those were the most fruitful years of his scientific production aimed at perfecting his conception of the State, deepening the Rosminian sources, confronting the evolutionary theories of Herbert Spencer and at the same time have correspondence with some of the greatest philosophers, jurists, patriots and historians of the time such as: Rudolf von Jhering, Johann Caspar Bluntschli, Édouard Le Roy, Niccolò Tommaseo, Gino Capponi and many others.
Works
- La personalità originaria e la personalità derivata (1868)
- Kant e Rosmini (1869)
- La scienza e la vita (1870)
- La mente dell'Aquinate e la filosofia moderna (1873)
- Filosofia del diritto (1880)
- Critica della dottrina etico-giuridica di J. S. Mill (1889)
- Le supreme dottrine filosofiche e giuridiche di G. B. Vico rivendicate (1894)
- La pretesa persona giuridica e le funzioni personali degli enti morali (1895)
- Della Riforma religiosa civile di Nicola Spedalieri, discorso letto in Messina nel primo centenario della sua morte (1896)
- Le fonti del sistema filosofico di Antonio Rosmini (1897)
- Due meravigliose scoperte di Antonio Rosmini: l'essere possibile e l'unità della storia dei sistemi ideologici (1897)
- Il Canonico Annibale Maria Di Francia e la sua Pia Opera di beneficenza (1902)
- Manuale di filosofia del diritto (1903)
References
- Vittorio Polacco, La "Filosofia del diritto" di Vincenzo Lilla: Note ed appunti. G.B. Randi (1903).
- Gabriella Sava, ed., Vincenzo Lilla, Scritti di filosofia storia e diritto. Milano: Giuffré (1983).
- Antonio Tarantino, La filosofia della giustizia sociale di Vincenzo Lilla. Milano: Giuffré, (1984).
