A partire da Giambattista Vico. Filosofia, diritto e letteratura nella Napoli del secondo Settecento

A partire da Giambattista Vico makes a special appeal to abandon the growing temptation to make an enforced and unproductive Vico-centred consideration of southern culture for the complexity of motives and variety of politico-cultural propositions in which the very ‘dimensions ’ of Vichianism are to be set in the Italian tradition of the Enlightenment. Namely, the philosophical dimension of historicity of the same methodical reasoning according to the historicistic lesson of Vichianism on the one side, and the exigencies of empirical experimentalism and the political philosophies of Enlightenment on the other. If it proves somewhat reductive to match the identity of the Enlightenment with the interests of sure abstract reasoning alone, one nevertheless risks impoverishing a large part of the reflection of the Southern reformers by reducing it to a new modernised version of naturalism. The latter is associated with the reaffirmed sensitivity for the link between the history of man and the laws of a nature reported by ill-omened telluric events (the Calabria earthquake of 1783) at the centre of the politico-cultural debate of the 1780s. In it the modern politico-philosophical concept of order emerges, which is evidence of the search for social equilibrium for the modifications in the proprietary balance caused by the “crisis of refined reason” and by the anti-feudal dispute in the pages of the «Scelta Miscellanea i.e. the Miscellaneous Choice » (the review of the Freemason circle of the Di Gennaro brothers, enhanced by the writings of Vico and Genovesi, Filangieri, Pagano and Napoli-Signorelli), stimulated by the discussions on the Scienza della Legislazione and American constitutionalism. In addition A partire da Vico re-examines the link between philology (history) and philosophy by utilizing the rational principles of the law for an analysis of human society through the knowledge of languages, the history of law and the philosophy of laws. Thus the utopian dimension of the philosophy of the post-Genovesi generation is transformed into the historical one of legislation. It is all what Vico’s philological theses documentated regarding the origin of the XII Tables from Gravina to Filangieri, from Pagano to Delfico, passing through d’Asti and Concina, Lami and Duni, fomenting interest in the philosophical question regarding the basis of the validity of the right. On the same theme the theses of Guido Grandi and Bernardo Tanucci have also been analyzed which are illustrative of the struggle over the application of the Justinian right as source of legitimacy of monarchical power in the Italian late Middle Ages, to respond to the delicate political questions, imposed by the Habsburg pretensions of attributing a feudal character to the claimed primacy of the empire over the Grand Duchy of the Medici. The aim of this research has also been to offer the findings of an examination around what, albeit within the setting of Vico and his destiny, is not always immediately referable to him. The essays set him between literature, the cyclic philosophy of man’s natural history (Bertòla) and pre-revolutionary anti-curialism (Conforti) down to certain thinkers of philosophical and political thought of the Napoleonic decade. From Delfico to Pagano, from Cuoco to Lomonaco, from Salfi to Jannelli, from Romagnosi to Ferrari it is no longer a matter of considering Vichianism devoid of knowledge of philosophy. To understand what Vichiano is both in and for the Lucan patriot Francesco Lomonaco, student in Naples and in direct contact with the Southern tradition of Enlightenment (through the assiduous frequenting of the works of Filangeri and more especially those of Pagani) means scrutinising the Enlightenment and Vichianism at their essential meeting points, which comprise at the same time both common and contrasting points, as well as interruptions and continuations.