Vincenzo Ferrone, translated by Sophus A. Reinert

Foreword by Sophus A. Reinert; Preface: A World to Rediscover: The Enlightenment Origins of Modern Italian Republicanism; Part One: The New Politics 'Ex Parte Civium'; 1. The Enlightenment and the Political Critique of the 'Scientia Juris'; 2. The Critique of the British Constitutional Model and the Political Laboratory of the American Revolution; 3. Against Montesquieu and Class Constitutionalism: The Denunciations of the 'Feudal Monster' and the 'Tempered Monarchy'; 4. Constructing a New Constitutionalism: Masonic Sociability and Equality; 5. The Neapolitan School of Natural Law and the Historical Origins of the Rights of Man; 6. Beyond 'Reason of State': The Moral and Religious Foundations of the New Politics 'Ex Parte Civium'; 7. Nation or Fatherland? The Republican and Constitutional Patriotism of Italian Enlightenment Thinkers; Part Two: A Difficult Legacy; 8. The Original Character of Enlightenment Constitutionalism: From the 'Scienza della legislazione' to the 1799 'Progetto di constituzione napoletana'; 9. Vincenzo Cuoco: The National Critique of Cosmopolitan Enlightenment Constitutionalism; 10. The Liberal Constant against the Enlightened Filangieri: Two Interpretations of Modernity; 11. Filangierian Heresies in the European Democratic Tradition: The Principle of Justice and the Rights of Happiness; Notes; Index

Written by one of Italy's leading historians, this book analyses the context and legacy of Gaetano Filangieri's seven-volume 'Science of Legislation'. This study engages with the unique history of Enlightenment Naples, the intellectual traditions upon which Filangieri drew, and the powerful repercussions of the American Revolution in eighteenth-century Italy to re-draw the map of Enlightenment republicanism and the early history of human rights and their political economy.