GIOBERTI, VINCENZO (1801-1852), Italian philosopher and politician, was born at Turin where he was educated. He was ordained priest in 1825. Partly under the influence of Mazzini, the freedom of Italy became his ruling motive in life, its eman cipation, not only from foreign masters, but from modes of thought alien to its genius, being linked in his mind with papal supremacy, though in an intellectual rather than political way. On the accession of Charles Albert he received a court chaplaincy, but he resigned this office in 1833, and shortly afterwards was arrested on suspicion of political intrigue. Imprisoned and ban ished without a trial, Gioberti went to Paris, and a year later, to Brussels, where he remained till 1845, teaching philosophy, and writing philosophical works. An amnesty having been declared by Charles Albert in 1846, Gioberti returned to Italy in 1847 and was enthusiastically received. He was soon elected president of the Chamber of Deputies. At the close of the same year a new ministry was formed, headed by Gioberti ; but with the accession of Victor Emmanuel in March 1849, his active life came to an end. For a short time he held a seat in the cabinet, though without a portfolio; but an irreconcilable disagreement soon followed, and he was sent on a mission to Paris where he remained until his death on Oct. 26, 1852.
Gioberti's writings are more important than his political career. Writing against the speculations of Rosmini-Serbati, he recon structs, as he declares, ontology, and begins with the assertion that the Ens creates ex nihilo the existent, which is the universal idea in God become finite and individual. God is the only being (Ens) ; all other things are merely existences. God is also the origin of all human knowledge, and we apprehend Him by intui tion. A knowledge of both being and existences, and of their mutu al relations, is necessary as the beginning of philosophy. Gioberti is in some respects a Platonist. He identifies religion with civiliza tion, and in his Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani (1843) concludes that the church is the axis on which the well-being of human life revolves. In it he pictures the supremacy of Italy, brought about by the restoration of the papacy as a moral dominion, founded on religion and public opinion. In his later works, the Rinnovamento and the Protologia, he is thought by some to have shifted his ground under the influence of events. In his first publication La Teorica del sovran-naturale (1838) he supported the reality of revelation and the future life. In the Introduzione allo studio della filosofia (3 vols., 1839-40) he states his reasons for requiring a new method and new termi nology, and brings out the doctrine that religion is the direct expression of the idea in this life, and is one with true civilization in history. Civilization is a conditioned mediate tendency to perfection, to which religion is the final completion; it is the end of the second cycle expressed by the second formula, the Ens redeems existences, the many return to the one. In 1846 appeared his essays on the more popular subjects, Del bello and Del buono. Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani and its Prolegomeni and his attack on the Jesuits, 11 Gesuita moderno no doubt hastened the transfer of rule from clerical to civil hands. The hope that the loss of the papal temporal power would lead to a revival of religion expressed in the Rinnovamento civile d'I talia (1851), together with the pantheistic ontologism of his philosophy led to Gioberti's writings being placed on the Index. They were edited by G. Massari (Turin, 1856-61).
See G. Massari, Vita de V. Gioberti (Florence, 1848) ; A. Rosmini Serbati, V. Gioberti e it panteismo (Milan, 1848) ; A. Mauri, Della vita e delle opere di V. Gioberti (Genoa, 1853) ; B. Spaventa, La Filosofia di Gioberti (Naples, 1863) ; G. Prisco, Gioberti e l'onto logismo (Naples, 1867) ; P. Luciani, Gioberti e la filosofia nuova italiana (Naples, 1866-72) ; D. Berti, Di V. Gioberti (Florence, 1881). See also L. Ferri, L'Histoire de la philosophie en Italie au X I X e siecle (1869) ; C. Werner, Die italienische Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts, ii. (1885) ; R. Mariano, La Philosophie cont em poraine en I talie (1866) ; D. Carutti, Il Pensiero Civile di V. Gioberti (Turin, 19oi) ; G. Gentile, I Profeti del Risorgimento Italiano (Florence, 1923).