Scottish Enlightenment in Naples: history and political languages of reform

In the political history of Enlightenment ideas from 1754 to 1784, in other words among the philosophes of the generation of Genovesi to that of his pupils, the culture of Hume and Ferguson had a wide circulation, eliciting as many different reactions as there were positions of Neapolitan philosophes. Through these various readings of the Scottish Enlightenment, on the basis in general of Genovesi’s Lezioni di Commercio and more in detail of his interest in Hume, I show how two contrary positions were produced in the second generation of Neapolitan Enlightenment thinkers, even though they can both be placed within the Enlightenment: on the one hand, the conservative Enlightenment of Francesco Grimaldi’s hierarchical thought, and on the other, Pagano’s radical political thought.