Rosmini-Serbati Antonio (1797–1855), Italian philosopher, Catholic priest, counselor to Pope Pius IX, and supporter of the supremacy of the church over civil government (Neo-Guelphism). Rosmini had two major concerns: the objectivity of human knowledge and the synthesis of philosophical thought within the tradition of Catholic thought. In his Nuovo saggio sull’origine delle idee (‘New Essay on the Origin of Ideas,’ 1830), he identifies the universal a priori intuitive component of all human knowledge with the idea of being that gives us the notion of a possible or ideal being. Everything in the world is known by intellectual perception, which is the synthesis of sensation and the idea of being. Except for the idea of being, which is directly given by God, all ideas derive from abstraction. The objectivity of human knowledge rests on its universal origin in the idea of being. The harmony between philosophy and religion comes from the fact that all human knowledge is the result of divine revelation. Rosmini’s thought was influenced by Augustine and Aquinas, and stimulated by the attempt to find a solution to the contrasting needs of rationalism and empiricism. P.Gar.