Antonio Genovesi and Eighteenth-Century Empiricism in Italy

Antonio Genovesi and Eighteenth-Century Empiricism in Italy PAOLA ZAMBELLI SOME READERSWILL NO DOUBTRECOGNIZEin the title chosen for this article a commonplace , since it treats of what is perhaps the most critical and overworked theme regarding Antonio Genovesi. But it suggested itself to me since there is a need to attempt a revision of a historical thesis which does not seem to have lost its influence even today. I have in mind the introductory pages of the synthesis that Giovanni Gentile dedicated in 1903 to the History of Italian Philosophy from Genovesi to Galluppi, 1which is perhaps the only book that makes use of Genovesi's name to indicate an entire period of Italian culture. However, this does not have much significance since Gentile, who was at that time intent on elaborating his Rebirth of Idealism 2 and fresh from his attempt to bring up to date Bertrando Spaventa's thesis of the "circulation of European thought," saw in the "historical process by which there gradually came to be elaborated that empiricism initiated by Genovesi" a break, a moment "not directly fastened as one link to another link of a chain in the history of Italian philosophy from Rosmini onwards." As is well known, this historiographic statement was a continuation of Spaventa's cultural polemic and of his classical formulation of this thesis in the lectures with which he inaugurated his own teaching at the universities of Bologna and Naples in 1860, the very year of the unification of Italy. It is easy to find in the cultural situation of Naples before and after 1848 the grounds for Spaventa's rejection both of the still dominant empiricism and even more of the eclecticism juste-milieu inspired by Victor Cousin and Frangois Guizot. Spaventa's translation of Hegel's philosophy of history and history of philosophy into Italian terms corresponds to his revaluation of the "providence" of Vico and to his reinterpretation of Rosmini and Gioberti. Gentile did not disassociate himself This articleis a developmentand expansionof an earlieressay, "L'empirismo a Napolie Genovesi," that appeared in Atti del XX1V Congresso Nazionale di Filosofia, vol. 2, Communicazioni, tomo 2 (Rome, 1974),pp. 489-499. I am indebtedto Professor Edward P. Mahoneyof DukeUniversityfor his generosityin makingthis translation and also for various suggestionsregardingthe article itself. Giovanni Gentile, Dal Genovesi al Galluppi (Trani, 1903;reprinted as Storia dellafilosofia italiana dal Genovesi al Galluppi, (Milan, 1930), 1:1-23. Of interest for Le Clercand De Soria, hut validtoo for the Ars Logico-critica of Genovesi,whichdrew its inspiration from them, is Gentile's "Contributo del metodo critico," in his Studi sul Rinascimento, 3rd ed. (Florence, 1968), pp. 250-280. It has been translated in History and Theory 4 (1964-1965):315-327as "Eighteenth Century HistoricalMethodology : De Soria's Institutiones." 2La Rinascittl dell" idealismo (Naples, 1903). [195] 196 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY from these theses of Spaventa, which were tied both to polemical origins and to Hegelian premises. Indeed, he scorned more than Spaventa himself "the century that interposes itself between Vico and Rosmini" for its "uninterrupted empiricist course," which had originated with Genovesi and was still dominant in southern culture. On the one hand, connected to this judgment is Gentile's thesis of Vico's isolation from his contemporaries, and this despite Gentile's allusions in his Studi vichiani to the tradition of the Galilean academies. And on the other hand, set over against the censure of the South's failure to follow its proper speculative vocation is Gentile's kind regard for "the opposed idealistic tendency" of the North, exemplified in the eighteenth century by Gerdil. However, Gentile fails to take into account Verri, Beccaria, and the other Northern philosophes, down to Romagnosi, Ferrari, and Cattaneo. 3 It is thus useless to insist on the polemical and rather antiquated model of Gentile's outline. It is not my purpose here to insist on the empiricist convictions of these Milanese thinkers, nor to examine the intellectual apprenticeship that Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria both profess in regard to Genovesi. Nevertheless , I would like to present the major results of my research on Genovesi in order to redefine and to establish the historical precedents of that empiricism Gentile...