Preserving the Neapolitan state: Antonio Genovesi and Ferdinando Galiani on commercial society and planning economic growth

Preserving the Neapolitan state: Antonio Genovesi and Ferdinando Galiani on commercial society and planning economic growth

Koen Stapelbroek

Dicembre 2006

Journal Article

Koen Stapelbroek

Journal Article

10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2006.08.008

0191-6599

Both Antonio Genovesi and Ferdinando Galiani devised strategies for Neapolitan economic development, which they realised was essential for preserving its recently acquired independent statehood. In order to avoid any socially disruptive effects they considered how economic processes changed the human mind. Both thinkers grounded their political visions on foreign trade on highly sophisticated ideas of the nature of self-interest. In spite of the similar characters of their projects, the political thought of Genovesi and Galiani has never been subject to serious comparison. Instead the two thinkers have tended to be portrayed as opposite characters with highly divergent political leanings. It is argued here that this view is historically questionable and itself a product of a distorting canonisation process that was set in motion in the second half of the eighteenth century. Ironically, comparing the moral philosophies and economic ideas of Genovesi and Galiani, a picture emerges that inverts the myth that started at the end of the eighteenth century and that until this day has determined accounts of the early Neapolitan Enlightenment.

2015-01-03 13:24:31

Dicembre 2006

4

History of European Ideas

ScienceDirect

406-429

History of European Ideas

Commerce and Morality in Eighteenth-Century Italy

Preserving the Neapolitan state

Preserving the Neapolitan state: Antonio Genovesi and Ferdinando Galiani on commercial society and planning economic growth

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191659906000507

32

ScienceDirect Snapshot