Raphael Debono was a Maltese minor philosopher. In philosophy he mostly specialised in logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

. No portrait of him is known to exist.

Life

Almost nothing is known about the personal life of Debono. He was probably one of the thousands of Maltese emigrants in Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, around the end of the 19th century.

Extant work

Just one composition of Debono survives as yet. It is a pamphlet in Italian published in Cairo in 1884 (Typo Lithographe Franco-Egyptienne J. Serrière) under the title Di una Teorica di Analisi Logica (An Investigation of Analytical Logic). The work is an interesting disputation on technical points of some aspects of symbolic logic, also called mathematical logic

Mathematical logic

Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...

. The tone used is friendly. If the disputation ever took place (it might be supposed), it was between two friends in the professional spirit of academic collaboration and amity. Perhaps this is an inherent message which Debono also wanted to get through to his readers. Nevertheless, Debono mentions a certain S. Frendo as his interlocutor, who might have been a language professor at the Italian public schools of Cairo.

After an introduction, the work is divided into three parts, amongst which the first is the most substantial and important. The first part bears the name Pro Veritate (For Truth). Debono refutes certain positions of analytic logic held by his colleague. Debono seems to imply that the positions were exposed in an earlier publication by Frendo.

The other two parts of the work successively refer to a letter which Debono had written (perhaps in some newspaper), and to Frendo’s publication. Few other details are provided to get at the bottom of the story. Nevertheless, the style and argumentation of the work is intriguing. It is clear that Debono is of an Aristotelian

Aristotelianism

Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings...

frame of mind.

Sources

• Mark Montebello, Il-Ktieb tal-Filosofija f’Malta (A Source Book of Philosophy in Malta), PIN Publications, Malta, 2001.