Francesco Bonatelli, an Italian spiritualist philosopher, was born in Iseo, Brescia. He studied at the University of Vienna and taught philosophy at the universities of Bologna (1861–1867) and Padua (1867–1911). Bonatelli belonged to the tradition of Catholic spiritualism. He was one of the principal editors of Filosofia delle scuole italiane, a review founded in 1870 by Terenzio Mamiani to defend a Platonizing position, but he resigned in 1874 when the Platonist Giovanni Maria Bertini published criticisms of Catholicism that Bonatelli considered too bold. Bonatelli introduced the analytic method of German psychological research into Italy.

Bonatelli attempted to distinguish consistently between the unity of the ego and the multiplicity of psychic events. In his first work, Pensiero e conoscenza (Thought and consciousness; Bologna, 1864), Bonatelli distinguished two ways of life for the soul, one that is subject to the laws of fate and another that, although it recognizes these laws...