Vincenzo Gioberti, (born April 5, 1801, Turin, Piedmont [Italy]—died Nov. 26, 1852, Paris, France), Italian philosopher, politician, and premier of Sardinia-Piedmont (1848–49), whose writings helped bring about the unification of the Italian states.
Gioberti was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1825 and soon became famous as a professor of theology at the University of Turin, though his ideas began to take on appearances of unorthodoxy. He was appointed a court chaplain on the succession of the Sardinian king Charles Albert in 1831. Gioberti’s career was cut short, however, by disgrace and exile following a charge that he was involved in a republican political plot. Having already expressed radical views openly, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in 1833. He then exiled himself to Paris and Brussels, remaining abroad as a teacher while writing his first major works, including Introduzione allo studio della filosofia (1839–40; “Introduction to the Study of Philosophy”), a polemic against the philosophical system propounded from 1830 by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.
Whereas Cartesian rationalism had been well known in Italy, Gioberti introduced Kantian and post-Kantian metaphysics. His own theology, philosophy, and political views revolved around his concept of being, and his system is usually termed “ontologism.” He coined the term “palingenesis” to indicate the return of human concepts to the essential centre of being from which they become divorced. This reunion of the ideal and the real provided Gioberti a means of describing the actualization in human life of the life of the spirit, and thus palingenesis became an ethical, social, and political concept.
Despite his republican views, Gioberti never joined the revolutionary organization of Giuseppe Mazzini, and by 1840 he was firmly condemning violence as a means to Italian unity. He advocated a constitutional monarchy “as far removed from demagogy as it is from despotism.” In his most celebrated work, Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843; “On the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italian Race”), he sought to present practical methods of realizing his political ideals. Asserting the value of the unique contribution that federated Italians might make to world civilization, he recommended the creation of an Italian federation headed by the pope. Gioberti’s proposal was widely praised, and when Pius IX was elected in 1846, he was referred to as “Gioberti’s pope” for his alleged sympathy with the plan.
An ensuing amnesty permitted Gioberti to return to Turin in 1847. Serving as president of the newly constituted Chamber of Deputies, he was also premier briefly from 1848 to 1849, when he became ambassador to France after his cabinet dissolved. He resigned soon afterward but remained in Paris until his death, living once again in self-imposed exile, while his views came into increasing disfavour in Rome. His second important political work, Del rinnovamento civile d’Italia (1851; “On the Civil Renewal of Italy”), showed greater approval of total democracy, inspired by popular risings in 1848 in Venice and Milan. Gioberti’s fortunes were then reversed: the papacy turned against him, and his works were placed on its Index of Forbidden Books.