RICERCA ITALIANA     

The Late Enlightenment and the Crisis of the Old Regime in Europe

Università degli Studi di Torino

Abstract

The project will investigate the final phase of the Enlightenment as a subject in its own right. Encompassing both intellectual developments and their cultural and institutional settings, it will examine ways in which earlier Enlightenment preoccupations were re-assessed and new ones came to the fore. It reflects the conviction that the late Enlightenment should not be subsumed within the origins of the French Revolution. The attention will be concentrated on the debate about the the creation of a new political language, the abolition of feudality, the rights of men, the new patriotic mean, the expansion of the public sphere, the construction of the new civil society and of birth of the public opinion, and the innovations in the economical system to reconcile virtue and wealth, development and equity. The purpose of this project, therefore, is to explore the historical context of the Eighteenth-Century globalisation and the abrupt politicisation of the Enlightenment culture and her peculiarities. <<<

Principal Investigator

Vincenzo Ferrone Università degli Studi di TORINO

Research Objectives

The project will investigate the final phase of the Enlightenment as a subject in its own right in the crisis of European Old Regime. It reflects the conviction that the late Enlightenment should not be subsumed within the origins of the French Revolution. It will examine ways in which earlier Enlightenment preoccupations were re-assessed and new ones came to the fore, as well as the extent to which the Enlightenment's proponents gained institutional recognition within their societies.
The transformations of European colonial empires after the Seven Years’ war, the commercial growth, the new interests toward travel literature, toward the “other” and the extra-European cultures, determinated the need to confirm the national identities in face of the break of the cultural differences. The end of the Seven Years’ war opened the way to the final crisis of the Old Regime, to the reforms enforced by the great national monarchies.
The end of the Seven Years’ war and these challenges to the traditional understanding of the Enlightenment have been particularly strongly felt in study of its later stages, in the 1770s and 1780s, from the age of the political reforms to the age of the revolutions. In these circumstances, the earlier intel1ectual aspects of the Enlightenment were re-assessed in face of the anachronism of feudality, the birth of the rights of men, the new patriotism, the rise of the public opinion, the new social and political function of the religion.
The purpose of this project and of the research unities, therefore, is to explore the changing social and institutional contexts started from differents methodological and scientific competences. As particular:
1) The unit of Turin will analyse the late Enlightenment taking into account its political and religious nature and its forms of public communication paying particular attention to its elaboration of the theory of human rights. Three problems will be considered. The first is the emergence of republicanism and Enlightenment constitutionalism, that will be examined in different contexts in the Italian peninsula (Piedmont, Lombardy and Tuscany) and in France with a comparative approach to the other European experiences. The second is the problem of slavery, to which the Enlightenment discours paid attention mainly after the Seven Years’ War and that is contextualized here also within the Italian peninsula. The third concerns the relations between jansenism and Enlightenment, within the process of secularization of the public reason by the end of Eighteenth century.
2) The unit of Naples aims to investigate the relationships between Neapolitan culture of Enlightenment, in its manifold local interpretations, and the economic, social, political, and cultural aspects of the crisis of the Old Regime. The research project will proceed along two separate though connected pathways. The first phase of the project will be directed to reconstruct the elaboration of a new culture of government, that is the way to the response to the crisis of the ancient Regime from an intellectual class whose main concern was to find new links to oppose to an evident erosion of a system perceived by them as anachronistic. In the second phase, the team will reconstruct the attempts to renew the praxis of government made by a number of exponents of the intellectual class holding public positions in some institutions.
3) The unit of the University of Oriental Piedmont will focus on the interaction of censorship practices in most European states in the 18th century with the emergence of public opinion as an alternative to the ideology of censorship. It will consider its political and institutional dimensions with attention to the censorship institutions and the legislation and to the actvity of the censors who were particularly influential. It will consider its generale and specific linguistic and conceptual dimensions through the study of books and periodicals in the aim to explain the concepts of “censorship”, “public opinion” and “freedom of speech” in Europe (in the Italian states, in France, in Spain, in the German-speaking countries). Part of the texts analysed will be available on line in a web site.
4) The Unit of Venice will focus on the time and ways of the creations of a system of communication, diffusion of the ideas and information which covers a wide geographical area from the Spanish area to the Habsburg one (Lombardy, Tuscany and Austrian Coast) to the Ottoman Empire. This will be done through the analysis of the changes of the political, economical and cultural lexis in some areas of the Mediterranean Europe.
This will be made possible thanks to the specific historical and linguistic competences of the members of the Unit, among which historians and linguistics interested in historical linguistics will cooperate allowing the analysis to be carried out within the Italian, Spanish, French, German and Turkish speaking cultures. The awarding of a research contract in order to make research on the traslations of economical-political texts of the late Enlightenment (translations and re-editions of the texts) is included within these activities. <<<

First Results

The activity of the research project will explaine the re-orienteering of politics in the Lathe Enlightenment as effect of the institutional and social transformations, due to the facing with extra-European cultures and civilizations and to the new rhythms of the intellectual, cultural, commercial and social transformations after the Seven-Year War.
The researches will be finalized with:
1) workshops with Italian and internationals specialists and PhD students.
2) two international congresses, to be carried out in Venice and Vercelli, in 2008 and 2010 with the involvement of Italian and international specialists.
3) a website at the Department of the humanities that will will freely accessible to the international community of scholars worldwide
4) Three collections of essays about the researches.
5) The publication of other essays and books by the members of the Research unities within the general project. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Enlightenment is nowadays at the centre of political debate in the current context of the crisis of secularization and costitutes a phenomenon studied, by many European and American scholars, in the search of European identity. Moving in this direction, the scientific starting point is represented first by the work carried out for a long time by the coordinator with collaboration of people who will take part into this project. The research started with the book “I profeti dell'Illuminismo. Metamorfosi della ragione nel tardo Settecento italiano” (1989; II revised ed. 2000) and continued with the book "L'illuminismo. Dizionario storico" edited by the coordinator and Daniel Roche (Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1997), which was edited three times in Italian, translated once into Spanish (“Diccionario Historico de la Ilustración”, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1998), once into French (“Le Monde des Lumières”, Paris, Fayard, 1999), and once into Russian (Moskva, Pamiatniki Historiceskoy Mysli, 2003). The research continued with the two previous research programs of national interest financed in the years 2000 and 2005, entitled “The Culture of the European Enlightenment” and “The Enlightenment and the human rights in the crisis of the Old Regime”, both directed by the same coordinator of this project and to wich partecipated many members of these four research teams. In particular we would like to remember some results of these activities, as the critical edition of “Scienza della legislazione” by Gaetano Filangieri (2003-2004) and the books now in the press: P. Delpiano, “Il governo della lettura. Chiesa e libri nell’Italia del Settecento, Bologna, Il Mulino; the critical editions of “Considerazioni sul processo criminale” by F.M. Pagano, ed. by F. M. Paladini, of “Il progetto di costituzione della repubblica napolitana” by Pagano, ed. by A. Trampus and F. Morelli, and “Della Diceosina” by A. Genovesi, ed. by N. Guasti. The activity implemented up to now offers the model from the historiographical point of view, that is an approach to the study of Enlightenment in terms of social-cultural history, based on the analysis of three main issues - the intellectual production, the modalities of texts’ transmission and the reception of texts -, that represents the result of a dialogue between the Italian history of ideas and the French social history (V. Ferrone – D. Roche, “L’Illuminismo nella cultura contemporanea. Storia e storiografia”, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2002). This research team forecasts an important dialogue with other European and American scholars focusing on Late Enlightenment, analysed through the study of the forms of the political communication, of the cultural institutions (book trade, academies, Masonic lodges) and of the politicization of literature in the years of the crisis of the Old Regime (in particular R. Darnton, D. Roche). With regard to the international debate, the project will focus on the problem of the human rights, as its importance (see in particular “Historia de los derechos fundamentales”, ed. by G. Peces-Barba Martinez and E. Fernandez Garcia, Madrid, Dykinson, 1998-2001; the book edited by J.C. Lüth and D. Jedan, “The Enlightenment Idea of Human Rights in Philosophy and Education” (Bochum, Verlag, 2002) and “Inventing human rights” by L. Hunt (New York, W.W. Norton &amp; Co., 2007). Another scientific starting point is represented by historiography on public opinion, that in the last years has reinterpreted the classical study of J. Habermas (K. Baker, A. Farge, A. V. Gunn, S. Maza).
As concern the themes of the four research units, the national and international scientific starting point is the following.
- In relation with the topic “Policy of Enlightenment and Forms of Public Communication in the Late European Eighteenth Century” (research Unit of Turin), it is constituted, as regards to the general problem of republicanism and constitutionalism, by the works of M. Gauchet (1989), K. Haakonssen (1996), T. J. Hochstrasser (2000) and M. P. Zuckert (1994). On French world important references are represented by M. Cottret (2002), E. Dziembowski (1998), B. Kriegel (1998), F. Furet – M. Ozouf (1993) and M. Vovelle (2006). As far as the problem of slavery is concerned, important references are the studies devoted to the theme with regard to Eighteenth century: in particular, Y. Benot, “Les Lumières, l'esclavage, la colonisation”, Paris, La Découverte, 2005, the two books of C. Biondi (1973 and 1979), O. Pétré-Grenouilleau (“La tratta degli schiavi”, trad. it., 2006); more generally, D. B. Davis (1971 and 1975) and, with regard to early modern Italy and with a different approach, S. Bono (1997, 1999, 2005). As far as the problem of secularization tackled through the relations between Enlightenment and jansenism, will be useful the studies of P. Corsini - D. Montanari (“Pietro Tamburini e il giansenismo lombardo”, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1993), M. Cottret (“Jansénismes et Lumières”, Paris, A. Michel, 1998) and M. Rosa (“Settecento religioso”, Venezia, Marsilio, 1999).
- As concern the topic “Neapolitan Enlightenment and the Crisis of the Old Regime” (research Unit of Naples), the project relies on the experience resulting from previous national project coordinated by this same cooordinator (“Enlightenment and the rights of man in the crisis of the ancient Regime”). In particular, the team was involved in reconstructing the sources of the Neapolitan doctrine of natural law mainly spreading in Southern Italy through the mediation of Antonio Genovesi and his school. Another scientific starting point is constituted by the works on the history of Neapolitan culture of Enlightenment, such as F. Venturi, R. Ajello, G. Galasso, G. Giarrizzo, and the other indicated in “Bibliography”.
- As concern the topic "Public opinion, censorship and speech freedom. Government agencies, social interests and discursive formations in late eighteenth-century Europe” (research Unit of the University of Oriental Piedmont), the scientific starting point will be historiography about censorship, that in recent years has been at the centre of an increasing number of historical studies. Particular attention will be paid to the works stressing on the limitations and the inefficacy of official controls on the printing industry: H. Göpfert- E Weyrauch, ed. by, “Unmoralisch an sich...: Zensur im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert” (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1988); “Der Zensur zum Trotz: das gefesselte Wort und die Freiheit in Europa” (Weinheim, VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1991); R. Myers- M. Harris, ed. by, “Censorship &amp; the control of print: in England and France 1600-1910” (Winchester, St. Paul's bibliographies, 1992); B. de Negroni, “Lectures interdites: le travail des censeurs au XVIIIè siecle” (Paris, A. Michel, 1995); S. Rosenfeld, “Writing the history of censorship in the age of Enlightenment”, in D. Gordon, ed. by, “Postmodernism and the Enlightenment, New York-London, Routledge 2001, pp. 117-145); R. Birn, “La censure royale des livres dans la France des Lumières”, Paris, Jacob, 2007.
- In relation with the topic “Languages and concepts of the Mediterranean Europe in the Late Enlightenment” (research Unit of Venice), two important scientific references, which served as national and internaltional base of debate, are constituted by the volumes “I linguaggi e la storia", ed. by U. Kindl and A. Trampus, and "Diritti e costituzione", ed. by A. Trampus (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2003 and 2005). Relevant international critical and interpretative tools are the works promoted by Q. Skinner, P. Burke and R. Porter, ed. by (“The Social History of Language", Cambridge 1987) and R. J. W. Evans ("The Language of History and the History of Language", Oxford 1998). The main guidelines of this research were presented in an international meeting on “Linguaggi e pratiche culturali nell’età dei lumi” (Venice, 6th – 7th June 2006) and in a workshop about the operational techniques to apply for the research on the historical and linguistic concepts (Venice, 19th October 2006) with the participation of scholars specialised in the political and philosophical speculation, such as Hans Blom and Koen Stapelbroek (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam). <<<