¹ “Our topic is social justice,” says Rawls, John in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 7Google Scholar. See also Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 222.2, and M. L. King Jr., “The New Age of Social Justice,” speech at Western Michigan University, Dec. 18, 1963.

² See Hayek, Friedrich A., Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. 2, The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 176–77Google Scholar. Hayek observed: “the term ‘social justice’… seems to have been first used… by Luigi Taparelli d'Azelio in Saggio teoretico di dritto naturale (Palermo, 1840) and to have been made more generally known by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati in La costituzione secondo la giustizia sociale (Milan, 1848).” See also Fortin, Ernest L., who cites Taparelli in “Natural Law and Social Justice,” in Collected Essays, vol. 2, Classical Christianity and the Political Order, ed. Benestad, J. Brian (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 223–42Google Scholar.

³ See Burke, Thomas P., “The Origins of Social Justice: Taparelli d'Azeglio,” Modern Age 52, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 97–106 Google Scholar. See also Behr, Thomas, “Luigi Taparelli and Social Justice: Rediscovering the Origins of a ‘Hollowed’ Concept,” Social Justice in Context, no. 1 (2005): 3–16 Google Scholar; and Novak, Michael and Adams, Paul, Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is (New York: Encounter Books, 2015), 90–91 Google Scholar.

⁴ This self-description can be found in Rosmini, Antonio, Theodicy: Essays on Divine Providence, trans. Watson, Terence (Durham, UK: Rosmini House, 2009)Google Scholar, bk. 1, chap. 29, para. 148. See also Rosmini on his mission of reviving Aquinas's “system” purified of discredited Aristotelian ideas that “would appear more beautiful than at any other period” ( Lockhart, William, Life of Antonio Rosmini Serbati: Founder of the Institute of Charity [London: Kegan Paul, 1886], 1:105Google Scholar).

⁵ See Cleary, Denis, Antonio Rosmini: An Introduction to His Life and Thought (Durham, UK: Rosmini House, 1992)Google Scholar; Royden Hunt, “Reason and Faith: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of Antonio Rosmini” (unpublished paper, Centre for Lifelong Learning, Cardiff University, 2001). See also Fastiggi, Robert L., “The Contribution of Antonio Rosmini to Catholic Social Thought,” in Catholic Social Science Review, no. 12 (2007): 141–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ In their view, Rosmini deserves “a prominent place among classical liberal thinkers,” mainly for his economic thought which grounds free-market principles on a Christian philosophy of the person. See Mingardi, Alberto, “Property and Liberty: The Development of Antonio Rosmini's Political Thought,” foreword to The Constitution under Social Justice (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), xliv–xlv Google Scholar; Mingardi, “Antonio Rosmini: Philosopher of Property,” in Foundation for Economic Education, April 1, 2006, https://fee.org/articles/antonio-rosmini-philosopher-of-property/; Mingardi, , “A Sphere around the Person: Antonio Rosmini on Property,” Journal of Markets & Morality 7, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 63–97 Google Scholar. See also Hoevel, Carlos, The Economy of Recognition: Person, Market, and Society in Antonio Rosmini (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which explains how Rosmini takes modern economics beyond utilitarianism to a Christian philosophy of the person with subjective needs for recognition of objective goods.

⁷ Rosmini, Antonio, Philosophy of Politics, vol. 2, Society and Its Purpose, trans. Cleary, Denis and Watson, Terence (Durham, UK: Rosmini House, 1994)Google Scholar, bk. 2, chap. 15, paras. 280–82; emphasis added.

⁸ Aristotle: “The laws make pronouncements on every sphere of life, and their aim is to secure either the common good of all or of the best who rule by virtue or some similar basis. Accordingly, in one sense we call those things ‘just’ which produce and preserve happiness or the parts of happiness of the political community” (Nicomachean Ethics 5.1129b13, trans. Martin Ostwald). Aquinas: “The justice which in this way is styled general justice, is [also] called legal justice, because thereby man is in harmony with the law which directs the acts of all the virtues to the common good” (Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, vol. 3 [Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1911], II-II, 58.5). See also Aquinas, , Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics, trans. Litzinger, C. I. (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1964), 279–99Google Scholar.

⁹ Rosmini, Antonio, Philosophy of Right, vol. 1, Essence of Right, trans. Cleary, Denis and Watson, Terence (Durham, UK: Rosmini House, 1993)Google Scholar, Intro., para. 26; emphasis added.

¹⁰ Rosmini, Antonio, Philosophy of Right, vol. 6, Rights in Civil Society, trans. Cleary, Denis and Watson, Terence (Durham, UK: Rosmini House, 1996)Google Scholar, paras. 2102–4; Rosmini's emphasis and capitalization.

¹¹ Kant, Immanuel, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Abbott, Thomas K. (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 45–46 Google Scholar, translation modified. Rosmini uses Kant's formulation repeatedly, although he gives human dignity a different ground than Kant. See Rosmini, Society and Its Purpose, paras. 31–32: “Relative to human beings, things are means, persons are ends. From these two fundamental relationships descend all the moral laws… . The first law [is]: ‘Human beings must use things as means to the end proper to human beings.’ The second law [is]: ‘Human beings must treat persons… as having their own end.’” See also SP, paras. 52–53: “An individual in a given nature is called ‘person’ only because of a sublime interior element through which he acts with intelligence and will… . Other elements… constitute his nature not his person… . The dignity of the personal element, which must always be considered as an end in itself, consists… in the fact that… the individual can adhere with his total self to truth, that is to being.”

¹² ER, para. 352; emphasis added. See Hoevel's more qualified view of the “person” as beyond “nature” but also sharing in nature, since “perfecting the person is the act of recognition” in which the intellect shares in the order of being. See Economy of Recognition, 61–62, where Hoevel quotes from Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science, paras. 851–53, which is ambiguous on the priority of person to nature.

¹³ See Rosmini on the Scholastic theory of perfection, as essences brought to their final ends, in Principles of Ethics: “When these accidental perfections are added to its specific essence, the subject reaches fulfillment because these perfections [are] developments of its act of being… . The final term towards which… any subject tend[s]… is its perfect development… called ‘good,’ as St. Thomas observes” ( Rosmini, Antonio, Principles of Ethics, trans. Cleary, Denis and Watson, Terence [Durham, UK: Rosmini House, 1988]Google Scholar, chap. 3, paras. 52–54).

¹⁴ References to this work will be by page to Rosmini, Antonio, The Constitution under Social Justice, trans. Mingardi, Alberto with introductions by Sirico, Robert A., Hoevel, Carlos, and Mingardi, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007)Google Scholar. Rosmini's ideas were gestating for decades but were not published until 1848, antagonizing supporters of Austria at the papacy, which led to Rosmini's censure.

¹⁵ “Above civil societies… there is an eternal justice which all humanity must obey…. [It] exists as does God from whom it has its origins…. Before all positive laws, there are others to which they must conform… [namely] a law of nature and reason…. Power itself must humble itself before eternal law.” “The best thing that was done in ’89 was certainly the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposed by Lafayette to imitate the American constitution” (CSJ, 28, 29).

¹⁶ See Rosmini's warning against “those systems of socialism and communism that now trouble the entire world… [and] are the logical consequence of the equal and universal vote” (CSJ, 63–64).

¹⁷ The term la giustizia sociale appears more than a dozen times in CSJ: 51, 57, 59, 69, 70–71, 76, 79, 80, 112–14, 137–38.

¹⁸ See Hoevel, Economy of Recognition, 168–69: “Thus, in clear opposition to any kind of perfectionist or materialist egalitarianism, Rosmini lays down the basic principle that all distributive justice is founded on the inevitable fact of inequality, which is in part the fruit of hopeless randomness, and in part of effort and merit. In fact, Rosmini affirms, ‘if government arbitrarily preferred some individuals to others, it could be seen as sinning against distributive justice. But if it depends solely on external circumstances, on the nature of things, and often on the varying merits of the individuals, it cannot be said to act with injustice and favoritism’ (SP, par. 625).Thus to him, an economically just distribution of goods is… the outcome of competition… and ‘never the task of government’ (SP, par. 628).”

¹⁹ “For Rosmini, social justice is nothing but social peace, a kind of harmony between the classes… in the regimes born of the French Revolution” (Mingardi, “A Sphere around the Person,” 84).

²⁰ Hoevel, foreword to Constitution under Social Justice, xix.

²¹ “The proportional vote we have kept for the election of the parliaments… and those interests are not equal in all men. The universal vote we have adapted for the Political Tribunal, representing the interests and the personal rights, which are and must be equal for all” (CSJ, 163, quoted in Hoevel, Economy of Recognition, 218).

²² Franck, Juan F., From the Nature of the Mind to Personal Dignity: The Significance of Rosmini's Philosophy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 174–75Google Scholar, who correctly contrasts Kant with Rosmini, despite their similar views of the human person. For a Kantian reading of Rosmini's personalist ethics with a Thomistic grounding, see Pozzo, Ricardo, “Contemporary Applications of Rosmini's Views on Personhood: Slavery and Intellectual Property Abuse,” Ave Maria Law Review 10, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 278–84Google Scholar.

²³ Ideal being is explained in several treatises: New Essay, part 1, chap. 3; Philosophy of Right, vol. 2, bk. 2, chap. 3; Principles of Ethics, chap. 3, art. 9, paras. 66–68, and chap. 4, art. 8; Anthropology as an Aid, paras. 505–15.

²⁴ Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. “Rosmini and Rosminianism.”

²⁵ See Rosmini, New Essay, part 1, chap. 3, para. 435: “Perfect indetermination is essential to the idea of possible, universal being [whereas] perfect determination… is essential to sensations… . For example, a stone could not exist without determinate form, weight, and so on. On the other hand, when we think of being in all its universality, we prescind from all such accidental and essential qualities… [and seek what is] universal in the highest degree.”

²⁶ See Franck, Nature of the Mind, 87–121. See also Rosmini, New Essay, part 1, chap. 3, para. 461, where he distinguishes his idea of being from the active intellect of Islamic Aristotelians as more separate from the human mind, and from Kant's innate categories of the mind as more creative. Rosmini credits Aristotle for seeing that the active intellect puts universals in the human mind prior to sense experience, although it was Aristotle's commentator, Alexander of Hales, who first recognized ideal being as the basis of reason (Principles of Ethics, para. 12, note 11).

²⁷ Rosmini, Antonio, Philosophy of Right, vol. 2, Rights of the Individual, trans. Cleary, Denis and Watson, Terence (Durham, UK: Rosmini House, 1993)Google Scholar, bk. 1, chap. 3, para. 52, note 23; emphasis added. See also Principles of Ethics, chap. 3, paras. 66–67.

²⁸ This doctrine got Rosmini in trouble by exposing him to the charge of “ontologism” (the claim that the human mind has an immediate intuition of uncreated being or God). As Fastiggi points out, however, Rosmini held that “immediate apprehension of God Himself… is reserved for the next life” (Fastiggi, “Contribution of Antonio Rosmini,” 142).

²⁹ I owe this insight to Rudy Andras, an independent Rosmini scholar who explained the importance of the law of the least means for social justice, as formulated in Theodicy, part 3, chap. 32, para. 951, note 537, which in turn refers to SP, paras. 581–628.

³⁰ See Theodicy, III, chap. 7 where Rosmini cites Aquinas, ST, III, Q. 4, Art. 5, ad 3.

³¹ Theodicy, III, paras. 417, 434–35, 472.

³² Pietro Piovani, La Teodicea Sociale di Rosmini (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1997; orig. pub. Cedam, 1957), XXII, 10, 94, 145–68, 245–61, 407–8, esp. 246–47, where Piovani cites Catholic natural law (giusnaturalismo cattolico) as the distant source of political liberalism that Rosmini's philosophy brings to fruition.

³³ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics V.1–7; Aquinas, ST, II-II, QQ. 58–62 on justice and its parts.

³⁴ Rosmini, Rights in Civil Society, paras. 2182–87, 2654.

³⁵ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997)Google Scholar, paras. 1928–30.