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The foundation of the right of property: Rosmini as Genovesi’s interpreter

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Abstract

The paper discusses the critical reading proposed by Antonio Rosmini Serbati (1797–1855) on Antonio Genovesi’s (1713–1769) idea of property right and its derivation (testaments, legations, donations mortis causa). This criticism encompasses a broader analysis of Genovesi’s economical and anthropological account. I aim at showing to what extent Rosmini’s interpretation addresses Genovesi’s thought, and to what extent his economic reflections can be read as a continuation of the tradition of Civil Economy. This, in turn, will offer the possibility to analyse the ‘right of mutual assistance’, theorized by Genovesi and not recognized by Rosmini, and its implication for our societies.

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Notes

  1. I will use the term ‘property’ as a synonymous of ‘ownership’, which is the word chosen by the translator of Rosmini’s Philosophy of Right (1993). Whereas not indicated by the English edition in the bibliography, the reader can infer that the translations from Italian texts have been made by the author of this paper.

  2. All these terms refer to ‘last-will acts’. Succession ab intestato regards the legitimate inheritance in the event of absence of a testament. The ‘legatee’ has right to specific patrimonial goods of the deceased, whereas the ‘heir’ becomes owner of the whole patrimony. Finally, the donations mortis causa concerns the donations made before the death of the giver, which are irrevocable and become effective in the event of their death.

  3. Source listed in Hoevel (2013) and Baggio (2015)’s analysis on the genesis of Rosmini’s economic thought.

  4. In Ideologia e Logica 1, Rosmini alludes in more than one passage to a letter written by Genovesi and addressed to Antonio Conti, in which Genovesi allegedly anticipates some of the themes treated in Kant’s first Critique (Rosmini 1851, 283–327).

  5. Such right may be declined ‘some grave fault on the part of the children or other descendants which merits such a punishment’ (Rosmini 1993b, 374).

  6. This premise was not at all new, as reported by Albini: Genovesi ‘reproduced a standpoint already expressed by Puffendorfio, Gundlingio, Barbeiracio, an later, more broadly, by the Kantian school’ (Albini 1859, 28). Nevertheless, I aim at demonstrating the specificity of Genovesi’s thesis, deeply rooted in his Aristotelian–Thomistic and Newtonian anthropological vision (Bruni and Santori 2018).

  7. See Hoevel 2013, 37.

  8. Genovesi could rightly be enumerated among the Sensists in Rosmini’s historical reconstruction of the different schools of thought.

  9. ‘In line with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Genovesi sees the nature of happiness as being constitutionally relational. Thus, happiness is civil and connected to the freedom and choices of others’ (Bruni 2006, 75).

  10. It is my belief that Genovesi’s Philosophy of Law, as well as Rosmini’s, may be included in the school of Natural Law, defined by Bobbio as such: ‘when addressing Natural Law’s “doctrine” or “school”, […], or more briefly, […] to Giusnaturalismo (Natural Law) we refer to the revival, the application and the diffusion of the ancient yet recurring idea of Natural Law that emerged during the Modern Age, that is in the period from the beginning of the 16th century and the end of the 17th century’ (Bobbio 1984, 15). Since Bobbio’s thesis was applied by Botto (1999) to Rosmini’s Philosophy of right, I will employ in Genovesi’s case a specular reasoning from another scholar, Eluggero Pii: ‘Genovesi found in the doctrine of Natural Law […] the solution. By accepting such theory, the solution maintained the appearance of a continuity between the ancient and the modern man, while the recent developments of the Natural Law theory imprinted the present character’ (Pii 1984, 92).

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  1. Libera Università degli studi Maria Santissima Assunta (LUMSA), Rome, Italy

    Paolo Santori

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Santori, P. The foundation of the right of property: Rosmini as Genovesi’s interpreter. Int Rev Econ 66, 353–367 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-019-00326-9

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