A New Essay concerning the Origin of Ideas

Introduction

The “Nuovo saggio sull’origine delle idee” appeared in Rome in 1830 and established Rosmini’s reputation; its title recalls Locke’s Essay and Leibniz’s New Essays. Rosmini reviews earlier answers to the question of where ideas come from: Locke and Condillac derive too much from the senses, Kant posits too many a priori forms, and Reid and the Scottish school leave the problem unsolved. His own answer is that the mind needs only one innate element, the idea of being, indeterminate and merely possible, which is given to the intellect by nature as its light. All particular ideas arise when this idea is applied in a primal judgement to what the senses present, so that we know things as existing. The work became the foundation of his later system and the starting point of the controversy with Gioberti, who charged it with psychologism.

Connections

Criticizes

• Critique of Pure Reason1781 · Immanuel Kant

More works by Antonio Rosmini

• 1848Of the Five Wounds of the Holy Church