Passions and the early Italian Enlightenment: human nature and Vivere Civile in the thought of Gregorio Caloprese

Abstract

‘Passions’ have been described as the opposite of reason. There is no place for forming them in the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment. Passions stood for self-love and self-interest at the heart of political philosophy in the beginning of the commercial era. The relation between the passions and the early-enlightened philosophy is closer than has often been thought. This article focuses on the example of the doctor, philosopher and literary critic Gregorio Caloprese (1650–1715), who is considered to be one of the most influential representatives of the early Italian Enlightenment. Caloprese is usually described as a Cartesian enlightened thinker who attempted to emphasise the rational part of human nature. Contemporaries, however, already regarded his conception of human nature as an example of the introduction of early-modern scientific accounts of processes of human understanding, which have as a starting point the perceptions of the senses, producing the motions of the body. These non-rational parts of the process of human understanding were more important to his philosophy than is often argued. They were part of a programme for intellectual renewal that drove the reformulation of Catholic philosophy from the obsolete scholastic intellectual tradition in Naples, in which Caloprese had a crucial part. This essay examines the development of Caloprese's views on passions in their historical context and their significance for his early-enlightened interest.