«Dove non si conosce il viver civile»

Nature and History in Antonio Genovesi’s “Lettere Accademiche”

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show the particular place of the Lettere accademiche within the corpus of Antonio Genovesi. Far from being a simple pamphlet, these letters offer, on the contrary, the conditions of possibility of a science of man based on the history and the human making, and that without having recourse to a hypothetical golden age. This positioning, resolutely in favour of civilization, gives Genovesi an original place in the history of ideas, notably in relation to Rousseau, Hobbes, but also Diderot.