IL PROGETTO DELLA PSICOLOGIA DELLE MENTI ASSOCIATE

The new edition of the lectures delivered by Carlo Cattaneo at the IstitutoLombardo from 1859 to 1866 is a useful tool for understanding one of his last and most important theoretical works. It offers information on the project of the lectures and on their connection with other Cattaneo’s works and in particular with his activity of teacher of Philosophy at the Lugano Liceo. The effort to give new basis to philosophyand to find a method for a sociological approach to history has always been a focus of Cattaneo’s intellectual experience. Nevertheless he conceives his “psicologia dellementi associate†as a necessary complement of individual psychology especially in thesecond part of his life. His basic idea is that any human activity and above all scientific researches depend on the universal nature of thought, which is the source of human progress and involves every people. So Cattaneo’s last work seems like a personal philosophy of intelligence. In the lectures at the Istituto Lombardo he appears as confident in progress, but at the same time is aware that a decline is always possible. He admires Sciences, but he rejects any deterministic explanation of the development of human thought and cultures.