Abstract
At the turn of the eighteenth century, while a number of important works on the history of philosophy were being published in France and Germany, only short works of little significance were being produced in Italy on the subject (see Models, II, pp. 213–297). In the second half of the eighteenth century, it looked at first as if Italy wanted to make up for lost ground. Appiano Buonafede, the most important Italian historian of philosophy of the time, declared this intention in the preface to his Istoria e indole di ogni filosofia, in the hope that “Italy still has some historian of philosophy”, who can thus “raise [it] from its past sterility”. Indeed, Buonafede added here, “Italy has almost no philosophical historians. Luigi Pesaro, Lionardo Cozzando, Giambattista Capasso, Odoardo Corsini and Antonio Genovesi provided a few essays on this subject, but did not think of writing a full history, the sole exception being Capasso, who in mixing much erudition and much credulity, even writing that Pythagoras was a Carmelite and that the Druids had predicted the virgin birth, greatly diminished the dignity of trustworthy history and made us lose all interest in reading his tales” (Della istoria, 2nd Venetian edition (Venice, 1788), I, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii). But it was not only Appiano Buonafede who was aware of this situation. Prefacing his Quadro storico e critico delle opinioni filosofiche, Paolo Marcello Del Mare surveyed the existing works on the historiography of history and among the Italians found only Agatopisto Cromaziano, the last in a long line of historians of philosophy. Before him were the Frenchmen Bayle and Deslandes, the Germans Buddeus and the “learned Brucker”, the Dutchman Voss, and the Englishman Stanley. Interestingly enough, in his Storia della letteratura italiana, which, among other things, also dealt with philosophy, Girolamo Tiraboschi ‘reversed’ the Italian sense of inferiority towards foreign culture and tried to demonstrate how Italy had always been ahead of other countries in sciences, letters, and all arts in all ages.
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Notes
- 1.
The Ragionamento, “written in 1778” as it says in the Opera omnia (Como, 1815–1830), edited by Francesco Mocchetti, was also printed in the Milanese “Collezione de’ Classici Italiani”, vol. 352, in 1804. Here we refer to the new edition contained in Raccolta di operette filosofiche e filologiche scritte nel secolo xviii, Vol. II (Milan, 1832), pp. 3–98.
- 2.
For a comparison with Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Amsterdam, 1770), see above, Chap. 2, Introd., e. This famous work had aroused a heated debate in Italy, critical and polemical, above all in the Jansenist periodical AE (1781, pp. 225–228, 233–237, 246, 377–379; 1782, pp. 17–20, 21–22, 29–30; 1789, pp. 82–83; 1790, pp. 203–204; 1792, p. 8), but also in EL (1773, April, tome II/2, pp. 84–95), GER (1791, tome VI, pp. 9–11, 13–14, 190–191), NGLdI (1788, pp. 553–554), and MSSLC (1798, Semester II, Part i, pp. 46–53; 1800, Semester II, Part ii, p. 109).
- 3.
Gener was the author of another similar work: the Theologia dogmatico-scholastica, perpetuis prolusionibus polemicis historico-criticis, necnon sacrae antiquitatis monumentis illustrata (Rome, 1767–1777, 6 tomes), which was greeted very favourably in Roman circles, as one can judge from the numerous reviews that appeared in ELR, 1772, I, p. 11; 1776, V, pp. 1–3, 9–10, 17–19, 25–27; 1778, VII, pp. 17–19.
- 4.
The work is available today in P. Giannone, Opere, S. Bertelli and G. Ricuperati eds. (Milan and Naples, 1971), pp. 789–911.
- 5.
The inaugural lecture was published in Josephus Rinaldi, Orationes in Seminario Patavino (Padua, 1746), pp. 73–89. Rinaldi’s Orationes were also reprinted in 1757 and 1758.
- 6.
The lengthy, descriptive title of Maffei’s work itself gives us an idea of the content: Istoria teologica delle dottrine e delle opinioni corse ne’ cinque primi secoli della Chiesa in proposito della divina grazia, del libero arbitrio, e della predestinazione. Nella quale con particolare diligenza si raccolgono i sentimenti in queste materie di sant’Agostino, e per la quale vien’ ad apparire quanto opposte alla cattolica tradizione sien le proposizioni dalla Bolla Unigenitus condannate, e quanto vane le difese in lor favore addotte (= Theological history of the doctrines and opinions that were held during the first five centuries of the Church concerning divine grace, free will, and predestination. in which, with particular diligence, the sentiments of St. Augustine are brought together on these subjects, and in which it appears how opposed to Catholic tradition are those propositions condemned by the bull Unigenitus, and how vain is the defence put forward in their favour).
- 7.
In Italy, Terzi’s work was reviewed in GE, 1777, ix, p. 59 and in NGE, 1788, lx, pp. 45–46.
- 8.
There were several editions of the work. Here we quote from the 1788 Venice edition, tome 2. In 1792 a new enlarged edition was published and in 1811 the Saggio istorico-critico sopra le ultime vicende della letteratura came out, which appears as book 4 of 1792 edition.
- 9.
Bettinelli’s Il Risorgimento d’Italia was a successful work: it later appeared in the editions of Bettinelli’s Opera omnia of 1780–1782, 1799–1801, and 1819–1820, and as a single work in 1786. A recent edition is used here, ed. by S. Rossi (Ravenna, 1976).
- 10.
This work, in 9 Vols, was reprinted again in Brescia in 1818–1819, in Milan in 1832–1834, and in Turin in 1854–1856. The Turin edition, used here, is in 8 Vols, “with additions by Camillo Ugoni and Stefano Ticozzi” and with a continuation “up to these last days by Francesco Predari”.
- 11.
Cuoco’s work had had precursors in the less famous works by Giuseppe Compagnoni (Lugo di Romagna, 1754 – Milan, 1833), entitled Epicarmo ossia lo Spartano, dialogo di Platone ultimamennte scoperto (Venice, 1797), which was an exaltation of equal rights between rich and poor, men and women, proclaimed by the French Revolution, and Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1716–1795), Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce dans le milieu du quatrième siècle avant l’ère vulgaire (Paris, 1788); cf. above, p. 71.
- 12.
Cuoco was echoed by the Calabrian physician and philosopher Francesco Lomonaco (1772–1810) in a digression, included in his Rapporto al cittadino Carnot, entitled ‘Colpo d’occhio su l’Italia’ (in V. Cuoco, Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, seguito dal Rapporto al cittadino Carnot di F. Lomonaco, ed. F. Nicolini, Bari, 1913). After recalling the grandeur of Roman Italy, Lomonaco looks at the period of the Barbarian invasions as the time when “the fog of ignorance had obfuscated the human spirit”. The Middle Ages and the outset of the Modern Age were to be dominated mainly by the “papist religion”: “Everywhere the proclamations of human reason are suffocated by the flames and the weapons of religious intolerance. Everywhere men’s rights are trampled on, holy freedom annihilated, the laws of nature slandered […]” (pp. 324–326). The author concludes by inciting the “future people of Italy” to trust, among other things, in the “ever-growing lights of philosophy and reason” (p. 328).
- 13.
Becchetti had already written a very famous ecclesiastic history consisting of 29 volumes (Rome, 1770–1797), a continuation of the equally famous work by Cardinal Giuseppe Agostino Orsi (Rome, 1747–1769), 21 Vols.
- 14.
Tiraboschi’s claims anticipate the theory of the “primacy” of the Italians, which was to be systematically theorized in Cuoco’s Platone in Italia, and then in Gioberti’s Primato morale e civile degli Italiani, becoming a fundamental theme in the political philosophy of nineteenth-century Italy.
- 15.
The polemic between Tiraboschi and Lampillas dragged on at length both in a lively exchange of pamphlets and in the pages of periodicals, particularly those printed in Rome. Cf., for example, the series of reviews that appeared in the ELR, 1778, vii, pp. 245–248, 271–272, 334–335; 1779, viii, pp. 357–360, 380–384; 1782, xi, pp. 42–43; and also in the MEB, 1781, pp. 275–279; 1782, pp. 105–110.
- 16.
One of Foscolo’s criticisms of Tiraboschi’s Storia was that it did not deal with “the literary history” of the eighteenth century, the first half of which also contained some “giants of historical and antiquarian criticism” (Intorno ad antiquari e critici, in Saggi di letteratura italiana, Part Two, critical edition by C. Foligno, Firenze, 1958 [Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo, vol. XI, Part ii], p. 304).
- 17.
Cf. S. Battaglia, ‘La dottrina linguistica del Leopardi’, in Leopardi e il Settecento. Atti del I Convegno internazionale di studi leopardiani (Florence, 1964), pp. 38–39.
- 18.
On Alessio Narbone (1789–1860) cf. Sommervogel, V, cols 1575–1576, and I. Carini, Sulla vita e sulle opere del p. Alessio Narbone d. C. d. G.. Discorso letto alla Palermitana Accademia di sc. e lett. (Naples, 1886); on the compendia of Andrés’ work, see pp. 13–14 and 18–20.
- 19.
Una lettera del Carducci all’amico C. Gargiolli (1860), in A. Lumbroso, Miscellanea carducciana (Bologna, 1911), pp. 186–187. Carducci mentions Andrés again in the essay Del Risorgimento italiano (in Poeti e figure del Risorgimento, first series, Bologna 1903 [edizione nazionale, vol. XVIII], p. 13). Here he speaks of the “numerous and industrious Spanish colony” that “became Italian, dealing ingeniously in Italian with criticism, history, the theatre, and music”; nonetheless, Carducci’s subsequently judgement of the Spanish Jesuits who immigrated to Italy, and all the members of the Society of Jesus in general, is highly negative.
- 20.
This work was quoted, among others, by L. Grillo, Elogi di Liguri illustri (Genua, 1846–1877), IV, p. 244.
- 21.
We do not know, however, whether the manuscript of the entire work was actually written and is still extant in some archive or library. On publication of the first tome, an anonymous reviewer wrote in GL that “this work, as appears from the plan [….], will consist of eight volumes in octavo of about 300 pages” (GL, 1793, xcii, p. 211).
- 22.
On the friendship that joined Rosmini and Meneghelli, cf. G. Radice, Annali di Antonio Rosmini Serbati, vol. 2: 1817–1822 (Milan, 1968), pp. 27, 29, and 151. vol. 3 of the same Annnali (Milan, 1970), pp. 495–496, recalls how Meneghelli had dedicated himself to writing a eulogy, to be read at the Paduan Academy, in memory of Carlo (1758–1827), Antonio’s cousin, renowned author of the Storia di Milano (Milan, 1820).
- 23.
N. Tommaseo, Gasparo Gozzi, Venezia e l’Italia de’ suoi tempi, in Id., Storia civile nella letteraria. Studii (Rome, Turin and Florence, 1872), p. 254.
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Tolomio, I. (2015). The Enlightenment, Erudition and Religious Apologetics. In: Piaia, G., Santinello, G. (eds) Models of the History of Philosophy. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 216. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9966-9_4
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