Pasquale Galluppi, the Italian epistemologist and moral philosopher, was born in Tropea, Calabria. He began the study of law in Naples but soon switched to theology and philosophy. At first Galluppi was strongly influenced by Christian Wolff. In 1800 he began to read Étienne Bonnot de Condillac and John Locke, and his first published work, Sull'analisi e sulla sintesi (On analysis and synthesis; Naples, 1807), was an attack on sensationalism. From 1807 until 1815 Galluppi studied Immanuel Kant. Although he was strongly attracted by Kantianism, he finally rejected it as "skepticism," and, through an examination of René Descartes and Locke, he arrived at a position strongly resembling that of the Scottish commonsense school as it had been interpreted by the French eclectics.

The publication in 1819 of the first volume of his Saggio filosofico sulla critica della conoscenza (Philosophical essay on the critique of knowledge; 6 vols., Naples, 1819–1823) brought Galluppi...