  The last nine years of Rosmini’s life, with the exception of 1848–9 when he was actively engaged in political affairs, were spent in great part working on his Theosophy (Teosofia). Despite its size (five volumes), this monumental work remained unfinished at Rosmini’s death and was published posthumously. The title itself, despite its obvious etymological implications, is today unhelpful. It would seem to indicate a philosophy ‘professing to achieve a knowledge of God by spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition or special individual relations’ (COD). Rosmini, however, is concerned here only with reasoning about God, and takes the word ‘theosophy’ in its fundamental meaning of ‘wisdom about God’ in so far as God is the supreme Being and the apex of philosophical speculation. Such speculation must sooner or later deal with the problem of the One Being and many beings, with unity and plurality in all their manifestations. In many ways, the book is a direct challenge to Hegel and Schelling with whose philosophy Rosmini had become thoroughly familiar as a result of the great editions of their works published in the 1830s and early 1840s. Kant’s teaching, already challenged in Rosmini’s A New Essay concerning the Origin of Ideas, was now to be opposed in what Rosmini perceived as the delirium and exaggerations of Kant’s Idealist successors.