TONGIORGI, SALVATORE

Jesuit philosopher whose works constitute a major contribution to the textbook, or manual, tradition of modern scholasticism; b. Rome, December 25, 1820; d. there, Nov. 12, 1865. He entered the society at 17 and, after completing his own early studies, spent the next five years teaching rhetoric at Reggio and humanities at Forli. Upon completion of his theological studies in 1853, he was assigned a chair in philosophy at the Gregorian University. During this period he wrote his famous textbook, Institutiones philosophicae (3 v. Rome 1861–62; 9th ed. Paris 1879), devoted to logic, ontology, cosmology, psychology, and theology. Written explicitly in the spirit of Christian philosophy, this follows the old scholastic traditions in matters not connected with the physics of the day, where the moderns are sympathetically heeded. Tongiorgi rejected the Aristotelian teaching on matter and form as outdated and ordered his treatise in a sequence that departed radically from that of the older scholastics. Following C. wolff, for example, he divided ontology into general and special parts.

See Also: scholasticism.

Bibliography: j. l. perrier, The Revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (New York 1909). L'Universitá Gregoriana del Collegio Romano nel primo secolo dalla restaurazione (Rome 1930) 188–189. c. sommervogel, Bibliotèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, 11 v. (Brussels-Paris 1890–1932) 8:96.

[n. j. wells]