Abstract
AbstractThis articles focuses on a significant change to the curriculum in “ethics” (moral philosophy) in the University of Naples, superintended by Celestino Galiani, the rector of the university (1732–53), and Antonio Genovesi, Galiani's protégé and the university's professor of ethics (1746–54). The article contends that Galiani's and Genovesi's sympathies lay with the form of “modern natural law” pioneered by Hugo Grotius and his followers in Northern Europe. The transformation of curricular ethics in Protestant contexts had stemmed from an anxiety about its relevance in the face of moral skepticism. The article shows how this anxiety affected a Catholic context, and it responds to John Robertson's contention that Giambattista Vico's use of “sacred history” in hisScienza nuova(1725, revised 1730, 1744) typified a search among Catholics for an alternative to “scholastic natural law,” when the latter was found insufficiently to explain the sources of human sociability.
Highlights
This articles focuses on a significant change to the curriculum in “ethics” in the University of Naples, superintended by Celestino Galiani, the rector of the university (1732–53), and Antonio Genovesi, Galiani’s protégé and the university’s professor of ethics (1746–54)
In August 1746, Antonio Genovesi was appointed to a professorship of moral philosophy or “ethics” in the University of Naples
The appointment marked a second attempt by Celestino Galiani, the university’s rector or cappellano maggiore, to secure Genovesi a permanent chair, after his failed attempt to install Genovesi in the cattedra of logic and metaphysics in March 1744.1 Until Genovesi’s appointment in May 1754 to a professorship of commerce, he would hold the cattedra di etica only in anticipation of a contest or concorso, in which any aspirant could vie for the post
Summary
In August 1746, Antonio Genovesi was appointed to a professorship of moral philosophy or “ethics” in the University of Naples.
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