Antonio Genovesi

Antonio Genovesi ( born November 1, 1712 Castiglione, † September 12, 1769 in Naples) was an Italian philosopher of the Enlightenment.

After receiving the priestly ordinations in 1736 to Genovesi turned to Naples and four years later was appointed to the university as a teacher of metaphysics. From 1743 to the first volume appeared in his Disciplinarum Metaphysicarum Elementa, in 1745 he published treatises on logic and science.

When in 1754 the Florentine merchant Bartolomeo Intieri in Naples founded the first chair of Trade and mechanics ( ie economic policy) in Europe, Genovesi whose first owner was. His textbook Lezioni di economia civile d' commercio o sia ( 1765 ) was the first comprehensive work on the subject of political economy in Italy; Here he developed - based on the wishes of the people - a first in-depth demand theory. With its attempt to unite free competition with protectionism, his teachings sparked by the hitherto predominant mercantilism. Unlike the - likewise merkantilismuskritische - Fénelon Genovesi stressed the importance of the production factor labor. Particular resistance provoked his proposal to expropriate land owned by religious communities.

Genovesi died in 1769 as professor of philosophy in Naples, next to his epoch-making writings on political economy, he proved by his logic ( De arte logica, 1742) and Metaphysics its in-depth knowledge of the philosophy of Locke, Leibniz and Hume, and is because of its Logica de ' Giovanetti and delle scienze metafisiche (1766) as the restorer of philosophy in Italy - against strong resistance of the scholastics. These attacks could his writing Universae Theologiae Christianae Elementa only appear in 1771 ( after his death).

Among his teachers was Giambattista Vico; Pasquale Galluppi was one of his students.