MONDOLFO, RODOLFO

MONDOLFO, RODOLFO (1877–1976), Italian historian of philosophy. Born in Senigalia, Mondolfo began teaching at Padua (1904). He was appointed professor at Turin in 1910, and at Bologna in 1913. Because of the racial laws he lost his post in 1938 (reinstated 1944), and moved to Argentina where he was professor at Córdoba (1940) and Tucumán (1948). Mondolfo's first studies were on psychology in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Next he turned to studies of Hobbes, Helvétius, and Rousseau. After his work on Lassalle (La filosofia della storia di Ferdinand Lassalle, 1909), Engels (Il materialisma storico di Federico Engels, 1912), Feuerbach and Marx (Feuerbach e Marx, 1919), he devoted himself to the study of Marxism, emphasizing the activistic, humanistic side as opposed to the materialistic one, as in Sulle orme di Marx (1919, 1948⁴) and Intorno a Gramsci e alla filosofia della prassi (1955). After the rise of Mussolini and the suppression of his Biblioteca di studi sociali in 1925, he turned to Greek philosophy and made many original contributions, especially in L'Infinito nel pensiero dei Greci (1934), his edition of Zeller (La filosofia dei Greci, 2 vols, 1932–38), and Problemi del pensiero antico (1936, 1961³). In Argentina he wrote other works on Greek thought, one on Bruno, Galileo, and Campanella, and Problemas y métodos de la investigación en historia de la filosofia (1949).

bibliography:

G. Morra, in: Enciclopedia filosofia, 3 (1957), 677–8, incl. bibl.; Enciclopedia Italiana, appendix, 2 (1949), s.v.R. Mondolfo; R. Mondolfo,, 1877–1976: In Memoriam / Amigos de Rodolfo Mondolfo (1977).

[Richard H. Popkin]