Antonio Genovesi 1713 – 1769

Antonio Genovesi was an Italian Catholic priest, philosopher, and economist of the Neapolitan Enlightenment and the first holder in modern Europe of a chair of political economy, established for him at Naples in 1754. His Lezioni di Commercio and Diceosina set out the characteristic doctrines of the Italian tradition of civil economy, in which commerce, justice, education, and public happiness are bound together within a Christian and humanistic framework. He shaped a generation of Neapolitan and Italian reformers and provided one of the main alternatives within Enlightenment political economy to the more individualistic mainstream of British and French thought.