Freedom and Infinity in Antonio Rosmini

Abstract

In his Lectio, Pagani moves towards an ontological foundation of human freedom. In his opinion, Rosmini’s notion of freedom cannot be understood if not by starting from the “initial being”, that is, that initial or original being that is the form of our mind, of our desire and of our humanity as a whole. This initial being is virtually infinite, but the human being by participating in it, can (in turn) participate in the infinity that pertains to it. This can happen in three ways, that correspond respectively to three fundamental ontological “forms”: the real, the ideal and the moral one. Rosmini, therefore, roots freedom in the intuition of being – that initial being that gives form to the human person. Thanks to the intuition of being, the human being embraces – in the ontological horizon, precisely – every reality, including himself; that is, he has the world present to himself, as something relative to that horizon: as something with respect to which he can therefore place himself according to freedom.