Desire, reason and faith in the inspiration and the structure of The Elements of Philosophy

[Autom. eng. transl.] In the pages of Sofia Vanni Rovighi's Elements of Philosophy he is "bound with love in a volume / that which for the universe is divided" (Par. XXXIII, vv. 86-87): the universe of philosophy, of course, as it is conceived by the "teacher" of the Catholic University, that is, as "fully valid, demonstrated knowledge, but which has limits: a high limit - so to speak - above which there is revealed Religion and a lower limit, below which there is science ”. Philosophy is therefore "metaphysics", "metaphysics of transcendence" and, more precisely, "spiritualistic realism". For this reason, philosophy presents itself on the one hand as "the most universal science" which has as its object the totality of reality and on the other "as an approach and solution to the problem of life". The two moments of philosophy, the scientific and the soteriological, are then in fact united because "solving the problem completely also means solving the problem of man"; in fact, "to know what meaning human life has, one must see where it comes from and what it ends at". But, in order to carry out this cognitive enterprise, "" we must carry out the whole philosophy: we must solve the problem of God, of the universe, of the human soul "and" of knowledge ". Thus already "in the beginning", in the Introduction of the Elements of philosophy, a point of capital importance is expressed in a synthetic and unequivocal way: soteriology, ethical or religious, is truly effective and adequate to the anthropological founded on truth. This essay proves that the authentic rationale of the Elements ultimately consists in educating for the good life, which is an impossible task without the knowledge of the truth and without the constant exercise of freedom. Against the concealment of the idea of creation, which today ends in the threat to the very identity of man, the Elements highlight the limits of scientific rationality, the subject-object scheme and rediscover the value of metaphysical rationality, which is capable of to draw, albeit with many limitations, the divine and the human, in the awareness that denying God means denying man. So ethics is the practical science of what man "must be" is then an authentic "action of love" towards God, oneself and neighbor and against any hypocrisy of appearing. An ethics of the end, therefore, or a teleological ethics that explains the ultimate reason why an act must be carried out to achieve a good life and, therefore, to lead human nature to perfection. Not only is the arbitrariness of command conquered, be it divine or human, but the transparency of acting is also achieved: I obey the law (heteronomy), since on the one hand I find in myself the exemplar of the law as constitutive of my nature (autonomy), so much so that I would go against myself if I did not obey the law, disfiguring my nature, and on the other hand, to God as my perfection (finalism), of which my nature in a certain way participates: its conformity to the his creative idea. Therefore the ethics of the Elements is not above all an ethics of duty and virtues (vs all legalism and utilitarianism), but an ethics of love for the purpose. The good life is made by keeping a firm relationship with the beloved: by going towards the beloved, for the love of the beloved, the lover becomes strong, that is, he acquires virtue, and is realized; he does not seek his own good first and then that of the beloved, but, on the contrary, seeking the beloved also does his own good.