II. WHAT IS FELICITÀ PUBBLICA?

What was public happiness concretely in the political discourse of the eighteenth century? Felicitas publica, or “public happiness,” was not an invention of the eighteenth century. In the allegories of the late Reinassance, Virtue and Plenty were companions of Public Happiness, thereby illustrating that virtue begets a well-acquired and stable plenty.^{Footnote 12} As Angela Voelker’s entry in the Reallexicon der deutschen Kunstgeschichte clearly demonstrates, though, the eighteenth century saw the iconography of felicitas publica acquire an hitherto unprecedented importance.^{Footnote 13}

“Felicitas publica” was, first of all, a motto that appeared on Roman imperial coinage after the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Muratori went to great lengths in his Della Pubblica Felicità to discuss this coinage. Medals and coins—a well-known means of communication for early modern political entities—fully reflect the key role of felicitas publica. Unsurprisingly “felicitas” appeared most prominently in the coinage of the Habsburg imperial family, therefore stressing the continuity of the Roman and Holy Roman empires. This was a novelty of the Habsburg propaganda of the eighteenth century. We do not often see mentions of “felicitas” in earlier coins of Habsburg rulers, but the Catalog der kaiserlich-koeniglichen Medaillen-Staempel-Sammlung records a medal with Maria Theresia’s bust on the verso, and the motto IVSTITIAM ET CLEMENTIAM COMITATVR FELICITAS on the recto. The motto is illustrated by the image of a sword and a scale on the two sides of a cornucopia, the horn of plenty. “Felicitas” is here the abundance that results for the empire from the justice and benevolence of the empress.^{Footnote 14} Another medal with the felicitas theme was coined for the birth of Maria Theresia’s son Leopold (actually coined in 1758, when Leopold was already seven). The motto was FOECVNDITAS AVGVSTORVM PATRIAE FELICITAS, linking together dynastic continuity, and therefore peace, with the happiness of the country.^{Footnote 15}

Leopold, the grand duke of Tuscany, also had a medal coined for the birth of his son and heir. This time, the recto presented an image more directly reminiscent of its Roman antecendent: a feminine figure standing, with a child in her arms and a horn of plenty, a lion at her feet, and the motto FELICITAS PUBLICA. Coined in 1768, the coin has an obvious symbolism that brings together the idea of a country able to support her children with the fecundity of her rulers. The invigilating lion stands for the city of Florence.^{Footnote 16}

“Felicitas” also appeared in medals coined to celebrate the return of “good governments” to a country by means of military victories. The Emperor Charles VI, to commemorate his victory over the Turks, issued a medal with Victory standing on Turkish trophies and the motto VICTORIA CAROLI FELICITAS CHRISTIANORUM. Under the reign of Charles’s grandson, Emperor Joseph II, the conquest of Dacia was marked by the medal FELICITAS DACIAE; the campaign against the French army and the Belgian revolutionaries ended with the return of the governor general and a new medal that reads AVGVSTI PROVIDENTIA. FELICITAS. BELGIS. RESTITVTA.^{Footnote 17} The medal was coined when the imperial army reconquered revolutionary Belgium in 1790, together with other medals coined to commemorate the return to Bruxelles of the governor general of the Low Countries that read LAETITIA PVBLICA.^{Footnote 18}

In all the cases examined, the happiness of the country and her people appears to be the result of some fortunate action of the rulers: whether the birth of an heir that will ensure dynastic continuity and therefore peace, or the happy conclusion of a military campaign against an oppressive ruler of some kind (the Turks or the French revolutionaries). Happiness is something that affects the subjects and it is identified with a plenty of fruits. It is, so to speak, an affection of the subjects, but it originates in the actions of the government. It falls entirely within the iconographic style that has been described for the triumphal arch of Francesco Stefano of Tuscany, Maria Theresa’s husband. The triumphal arch was built in Florence to commemorate Francesco Stefano’s visit to the capital city of his newly acquired grand duchy. The celebration of the grand duke’s victories over the Turks combines here with the exaltation of his role as propagator commercii. ^{Footnote 19}

The imperial family was not alone in the rediscovery of this theme, as many German and central European courts had medals engraved with mottoes mentioning “felicitas.” As Bruni himself noticed, the king of Naples, Charles III, also had a medal struck with the inscription deliciae regis felicitas populi, but, as Bruni failed to notice, Charles referred to his newly built palace of Caserta, the delight of the king, and consequently the happiness of the people. In any case, the Habsburgs seem to have been more consistent in mentioning “happiness” in their propaganda.

I have gone to great lengths in discussing the value of public happiness in the imperial iconography because I wanted to convey the kind of associations the term would evoke for people like Muratori, who was a direct subject of the empire, or Genovesi, who lived in an independent kingdom that only in 1734 had ceased to be part of the territories ruled by the Habsburg family. Although it would be in vain to look for a good definition of public happiness in these medals, it seems beside the point to understand it as some sort of collective private happiness, as the “happiness of friends,” as “making others happy.”^{Footnote 20} Instead, it had to do with peace and war, and justice, and general prosperity: the supreme aims of the state. It was the happiness of the public, not the collective happiness of individuals, that mattered here. Reciprocity and friendship were hardly an issue. We will see that more closely in Muratori and Genovesi.

IV. MURATORI, GENOVESI, THE PRINCE, AND HIS MINISTERS

Muratori was part of the broad “imperial culture” with the Habsburg rule effectively connecting the German world and the northern Italian states. What was public happiness for him? While the quest for private happiness was stimulated by “the ceaseless impulse of Nature” (impulso incessante della natura), humans also experienced another desire: “Of a more sublime sphere and of a more noble origin is another desire, namely that of the Good of Society, of the Public Good, i.e. of Public Happiness. The first [scilicet, the desire of individual pleasures] originates in Nature, this other one is generated by Virtue.”^{Footnote 21}

The unruly pursuit of individual happiness could lead, according to the erudite of Modena, to vice. The pursuit of public happiness, instead, would be rewarded by God and men: “Desiring and getting public Good is a great merit in the face of God and Men, as long as it is achieved by honest means.”^{Footnote 22} True heroes put public happiness before their own private happiness, while private citizens ordinarily pursued their private interest. This meant that private and public happiness, for Muratori, were distinct and not easily reconciled.

Although the pursuit of public happiness remained a duty for everyone, this duty was especially binding for “those in charge of the rule of mortals” (“chi presiede al governo dei mortali”) and for the men of genius and of letters, because they could contribute to the “improvement of the World”^{Footnote 23} on a much larger and decisive scale. For them, Muratori wrote his book on public happiness, “which should be the daily and most cherished goal of him, whom Providence chose for the throne.”^{Footnote 24}

Public happiness did not consist merely in the absence of individual evils—this was unthinkable for Muratori—but in peace and tranquility (cap I).^{Footnote 25} The motto FELICITAS PVBLICA found on Roman coins expressed, therefore, a crucial but also rather limited role of every government: “Be satisfied with the wool, without taking out the skin of the sheep.” Obviously, the sheep were the prince’s subjects (a metaphor that is everything but Aristotelian), and the prince was the steward of a happy people.^{Footnote 26}

Public happiness was “the task of princes” (“è mestiere dei principi,” cap. II); “for this reason, they have been elected and they transmit their power to their successors, and for this reason they are obliged to their subjects, who, in return, must obey.”^{Footnote 27} The task of protecting their subjects makes the princes shepherds and fathers of the people: “In any case, God created the rulers of peoples, so that they could love and benefit the people.”^{Footnote 28} Private individuals can attain a certain degree of individual happiness, but, for the enjoyment of public happiness, they have to rely on the prince and his ministers. Significantly, what makes happiness public is not its vaguely collective nature, but the fact that it is brought about by the state and its agents.

The stress on the absence of evil and on peace (i.e., the absence of war) as the fundamental component of public happiness comes to Muratori probably from Thomas Hobbes via Samuel von Pufendorf, and is characteristic for supporters of absolute monarchies: it is the tradition of salus publica. Many of the maxims of government contained in Della Felicità Pubblica resemble somehow the Ciceronian motto “salus populi suprema lex esto” and reflect an effort to make the prince appear (against Machiavelli) as a part of the state, bound by the same necessity of obedience to a superior law as his subjects. This is the case of the “Golden Principle,” according to which a prince should “strive to treat his subjects, in the same way he would like to be treated by another Prince who was his superior.”^{Footnote 29}

In exchange, his subjects will wilfully obey his orders: “and what are the right desires of the people? That their Prince have full authority on them; but that the Laws of Nature, of Nations, and above all the Gospel, have full authority upon him.”^{Footnote 30} In order for public happiness to appear, the ruler must not be hindered in his promotion of his subjects’ well-being, but he must himself obey three kinds of laws: those of God (true religion being the foundation of public happiness), those of nature, and those of the nations. An absolute monarch, bound by law, seems to be Muratori’s ideal.^{Footnote 31}

If we look, then, at the tasks of the prince’s ministers, they consist in promoting the good and protecting from evils: this implies waiving abuses and corruption, better regulating trade and the arts, and introducing new arts (industries). Their task is not simply to administer justice, but to “stimulate the Rulers to make their people wealthy and happy, as much as they can.”^{Footnote 32} This is the “Economic Government of a State” (“Governo Economico di uno Stato”) to make it flourish; “i.e. wealthier, more put together in its customs, more exempt from vices, more polite, more civilized, more populated, etc., whereby Public Happiness will ensue.”^{Footnote 33} Removing hindrances to trade is part of the duties of the government, but public happiness goes hand in hand with state intervention, which promotes the arts and trade, by imitating other countries in what they do best.

The model was King Louis XIV of France, not for his military conquests but for his promotion of the arts, trade, and inventions, and of the navy. Another example was Peter the Great of Russia, who “went to be educated in the best trading posts of Christianity, and with prizes attracted into his broad Empire everyone who could, in one way or another, make it more refined and improve it.”^{Footnote 34} This is but the image of the good prince of the late seventeenth century: willing to invite the best traders and craftsmen, and to develop manufacture and trade in his dominions, and who stylized himself as a “propagator commercii.”

An understanding of political economy, of trade, and of the crafts that are needed to improve agriculture and manufacture was the basic requirement for the prince and his ministers to make public happiness appear in their dominions. There were actually two enemies to the endeavors that Muratori promoted: one was the selfishness of rulers, ministers, and influential private citizens; the other was the sterile erudition of false wisdom. The great imperative bestowed upon the shoulders of writers of political economy is the education of youth for the service of the prince, and the education of the princes themselves. It is therefore the philosopher’s duty to promote useful “Lettere e Scienze.” Germany was the land of flourishing universities, where princes promoted letters, because they understood “whereof the true ornament and advantage of Nations consist.”^{Footnote 35} It was also a country where moral philosophy (filosofia morale or filosofia dei costumi) was extensively discussed in universities. For Muratori, moral philosophy was the key science for public happiness, and included economics, as well.

Antonio Genovesi’s dedicated teaching throughout his whole life had a similarly patriotic meaning. Genovesi’s appeals to the Neapolitan youth acquired a special status after his death, and lay in the origins of the movement for reforms in the kingdom.^{Footnote 36} Genovesi’s most famous text in political economy, the Lezioni di economia civile, went together with the Della Diceosina, a compendium of moral philosophy very much in the line with the natural law tradition and innumerable other textbooks in logic, ethics, and other disciplines.^{Footnote 37}

Just like Muratori, Genovesi believed that good moral principles can be attained only on the basis of God and nature, and in nature we find the true laws of humanity: nature cannot be baffled, “ei non si burla la natura.” Obedience to the laws of nature was therefore essential in order for man to be happy.

The object of the Diceosina was “the nature of man, the goal he is targeting, the law of the world whereto he strives to obey for his own happiness, and the general duties that arise from it.”^{Footnote 38} These issues had to be considered with regard both to the family and to the republic, in order to understand what a good man, what an honest citizen, and what a wise ruler of the state (“savio reggitore della Repubblica”) are, because, in every case, the nature of man is the only infallible guide. Man’s actions aim to escape evils and achieve pleasures. Political evils originate in the clash of private interests.^{Footnote 39} Happiness consists in having the least metaphysical, ethical, political, and religious evils. Therefore, happiness requires prudence, fortitude, justice, temperance, exercise, and “much virtue, in a word, that is the perfection of human strength.”^{Footnote 40} For Genovesi, the happiness of man meant to “occupy a niche neither bigger nor smaller than his natural needs.”^{Footnote 41}

Consequently, Genovesi condemned the false myth of indipendenza (isolation) as the source of major evils for individuals, families, and states. Man being so limited a creature, none is truly independent, not even the emperor of China, who is “the master of 120 million souls, and commander in chief of 800 thousand regular troops” (Reference Genovesi1780, p. 14). Genovesi even claimed that dependence, on the contrary, increases with office and command. The pursuit of independence begets immoderate tyranny; i.e. the violation of the “communia foedera pacis,” the rebellion against the natural bonds of man toward his like, society, and nature.

The natural sociability of man, instead, would originate in the ruling forces of human societies: the forza concentriva and diffusiva, the love of others and of self. Public happiness is the result of the equilibrium of these two forces, which rests on the strict observance of everyone’s rights.^{Footnote 42} This links to the strictly modern alternative of pleasure and pain, which we find also in Pietro Verri: pain moves man; actual pleasures do not; but the desire of pleasures does move, because desire is actually pain. This is the individualistic foundation of association among humans: association within the state minimizes pain. This statement was not just an homage to the Newtonianism of the day, as Bruni and Zamagni would claim. This was instead an individualistic foundation of the political community, in a fully modern way. The long quote from Machiavelli that followed this passage in the Diceosina makes it clear. Since Genovesi assumed that the establishment of the state would reduce pain, he praised, with Machiavelli, those who established religions, kingdoms, republics, etc.

At the core of the concerns of kingdoms and republics lay political economy, or, as Genovesi called it, “Economia Civile,” the subject that Genovesi taught at the University of Naples from 1755 within the chair of commercio e meccanica. The celebrated Lezioni di economia civile condensed this teaching. In sticking to the traditional subdivision of moral philosophy into ethics, economics, and politics, the Neapolitan philosopher stated that the first was the science of the isolated man, the second that of the “Chief and Prince of the Family,” and the third saw man as the sovereign and father of his subjects. This last definition allowed Genovesi to completely redefine the Aristotelian framework. Since the ruler was the father of his subjects and he had to care for the material welfare of the civitas, Genovesi’s politics consisted of two parts. One “embraces the rules that will make the subject nation more populated, rich, powerful, wise, and polite,” and this he called “Economia Civile.” The other treats “the art of legislation and of preserving the State and Empire” (“l’arte legislatrice, e servatrice dello Stato, e dell’Impero”). The latter one he called “Politica” stricto sensu, and it formed the object of a different science.^{Footnote 43}

Economia Civile therefore cuts across the Aristotelian oikonomika and politika. Although basically everyone would be affected by it, it was necessary for certain categories: “I. To everyone who owns land whereof he receives rent … ; II. for the men who deal with Courts and Inns. III; to the Theologians; IV. to the [King’s] Financiers; V. to those who rule provinces and villages; VI. to the Ministers of the State.”^{Footnote 44}

Economia Civile included all the practically oriented notions on “private economy,” treated especially by English and French authors: husbandry, agriculture, shepherding, trade, etc. Then it included the discussion of all the laws that regulate trade. In the eighteenth century, minimizing the pain of the subjects increasingly meant dealing with economic issues; i.e., with the use of wealth: “The use of riches can and must be considered either from an ethical point of view, from an economical point of view, or from a political point of view; this means either as far as life and happiness of the private man are concerned, or as far as the growth, stability, and happiness of families, or, finally, as far as the true greatness, and happiness of Nations and Government are concerned.”^{Footnote 45} Civil economy embraced this third aspect: national happiness.

Then, civil economy taught how to increase the possessions of a community. The king’s financiers (the finanzieri above, in the Neapolitan context, were closely linked to the state), especially, must know—an acknowledgment that Genovesi shared with the German theoreticians of the Policey, as we shall soon see—that the king’s income originates only in one “fondo,” the arts and trade.^{Footnote 46}

Finally, the Lezioni di economia civile would be helpful for the king’s ministers and councilors on the “issues relevant to the Economy”: trade, export and import, agriculture, manufacturing, money, and food relief. According to Genovesi, Jean-François Melon, whose work was dominated by the fearful relationships among trade, power, and war, was the person who laid out the principles of this part of the science. The first part of Genovesi’s work dealt with these very general principles, with a particular, patriotic attention for the Kingdom of Naples.

In the end, the nation was the actual subject matter of the book, and the Lezioni was addressed primarily to the young, patriotically enthusiastic gentlemen (i.e., the ceto civile) willing to engage in the service of their country.

The main element of public happiness, as well as of the private happiness of the family, was that the power of the ruler not be hindered by any “gross and barbaric resistance.” Such resistance Genovesi qualified as the “relic of the wild centuries,” most likely referring to the feudal and ecclesiastic power to resist sovereign laws.^{Footnote 47} The sovereign, as “the chief of all families,” was to be the only “moderator” of all obligations and rights that encroach in society. For the greater good of the political body and of individual families, he was supposed to make these rights and obligations compatible. There was no invisible hand, here, but mundane sovereign intervention.^{Footnote 48} It was therefore in the right and in the power of legislators to gather the forces of all citizens and, with a “light push,” make them serve “for their own glory as well as for the greatness and happiness of the political body.” These forces would make the sovereign almost almighty.^{Footnote 49}

In Genovesi’s view, in order to make use of the forces of his subjects, the sovereign should bestow “prizes” and “honours” upon his subjects, and restrain from encroaching onto their natural rights; above all, property rights. Without the power of the state, society would not experience a new Golden Age. Rather, it would regress to barbarianism (this being the great lesson of Vico).^{Footnote 50} The Middle Ages and the feudal government were examples of regression for the educated Neapolitans of the Enlightenment. Feudal power, ecclesiastic abuses, and the prevalence of private over public interest were the legacy of such medieval barbarianism, which Genovesi and his pupil were fighting: “therefore, a law-making power is absolutely necessary to the civil bodies, that will force, by its strength and knowledge, all the members of society to strive for the same purpose with a geometric proportion of need, strength, and rights.”^{Footnote 51}

In his mind, the aims of the political body would be three: the first was its own preservation, without which nothing else could be achieved; the second was the comfort of life; the third was natural and civic happiness, “which consists in eschewing, as much as it is possible, pains, disturbances, annoyances, grieves, and preoccupations.”^{Footnote 52} In the introductory explanation that Genovesi offered of how these three goals can be achieved, he clarified that they involve demographic growth, a strict education of the subjects that would accustom them to endure hardship rather than let luxury mollify them, an inflexible justice that spares none (and clearly he had in mind aristocrats and churchmen here) and protects everyone rights, and, finally, an economia that nourishes the people: “The economy, therefore, must be the third concern of Power. It comprises industry, the arts, crafts, the internal trade, the external trade, and a thousand more things that are useful for it. As a people grow, the need for food will grow as well, and also the paternal care of the Sovereign must grow in the same proportion.”^{Footnote 53}

Again, just like in the Diceosina, the real mover of human action is the fear of pain, of disorder.^{Footnote 54} By threatening the political order, man would “offend universal order, and would question and endanger the security of the rights of individuals and families, and therefore his own existence (se medesimo).” It was therefore everyone’s duty to do what he can for the “common prosperity,” because of his obligations toward himself and toward society. This duty, nevertheless, was understood by Genovesi as eminently negative, consisting mostly in the obedience to the laws and in restraint from offence. The sovereign’s arm would invigilate this.

The examination of the Lezioni di economia civile that we carried out so far should suffice to show that public happiness had not much to do with the “happiness of others” and relatively little even with the Aristotelian common goods. It existed instead in the activity of the government to shelter the subjects from the evils of war (peace), violations of their fundamental rights (justice), and famine (economy):

The protection of private property, including from feudal abuses, state monopoly, and rapacious tax officers, partook of justice and economy. The real activity in favor of public happiness lay in the hands of the sovereign and his ministers: not simply the defence of justice, but the promotion of education, of the arts, and of the navy; the fight against luxury and laziness, achieved by means of the establishment of academies; the construction of ports and ships; in forcing the poor to work; and in forbidding the import of dispensable goods—in a word, the promotion of virtue:

The examples that Genovesi set before the imagination of the Neapolitan youth, and therefore, in a way, to the future ministers, magistrates, academics, and soldiers of the kingdom, are the patriarchal rule of China, the inflexible justice of Friederich of Prussia, the civilizing autocracy of Peter the Great: not exactly the model of catholic late Aristotelianism, but monarchies known for the fact that, in order to police their countries, they disposed of the vested interests that history had sclerotized.

V. NATURAL LAW AND PUBLIC HAPPINESS

In the context of this reasoning, it is not necessary, I believe, to go to great lengths in order to discuss the differences between the erudite from Modena and the Neapolitan professor. How Aristotelian was their perspective? In both cases, their ideas obviously originated in a broader Aristotelian heritage shared by most European political thinkers. It connected with the Aristotelianism of late Scholastics, for instance, in stressing the importance of good life for the polis (“finem civitatis esse bene et feliciter vivere”) and therefore of common good for the lawmakers. If we look at a champion of Aristotelian common good and late scholastics, such as the Spanish Francisco Suarez, we know from his Tractatus de legibus ac deo legislatore that he considered the aim of legislative power to be not individual happiness, but the good of the community (“bonum communitatis”).^{Footnote 57}

Nevertheless, there is a very significant difference between his understanding of the extent of the common good and Muratori’s or Genovesi’s felicità pubblica. ^{Footnote 58} Suarez insisted that there was an absolutely clear-cut distinction between the rule of the state (“gubernatio politica”) and the rule of the family (“oeconomicum regimen” or “gubernatio oeconomica”). Although he acknowledged the fact that the “gubernatio politica” can interfere with the private sphere of the family in those cases “which can affect the common good of the State, by hindering or fostering it” (“quae redundant in commune bonum civitatis, et illud possunt impedire, aut promovere”), he clearly emphasized the separation of the different spheres of “gubernatio”: “everything else which concerns the private family, should be regulated by the each individual Head of the Household, not by state laws.”^{Footnote 59} Suarez engaged with the limits of “gubernatio politica” rather than with the duties of the legislator in the economic sphere.

Both Muratori and Genovesi had their own varieties of the “modern,” rather than “medieval,” natural law doctrine (and modern natural law was in many respects a radical break with the Aristotelian tradition).^{Footnote 60} Muratori, for instance, claimed straightforwardly that only the Gius Pubblico—the variety of natural law that was taught in Dutch and German universities—enabled one to judge the legitimacy and justice of laws themselves.^{Footnote 61}

Also, the anthropology behind Muratori and Genovesi is modern. Sociability in Aristotle and in his Scholastic followers was mostly a means to a positive end: the good life. In Muratori, and more explicitly in Genovesi, the main mover behind human action is the fear of pain, as it is in Hobbes.^{Footnote 62} The characterization of public happiness was therefore primarily negative: absence of war, absence of famine, and absence of threats to the demographic growth of the nation. The increase of comfort was important but secondary.

The focus on the role of the sovereign, with a strong stress put on the natural bondage of obedience, reflects early-modern rather than Greek or Scholastic concerns. As Maria T. Marcialis pointed out, Genovesi followed, in many of his works, the overall inspiration of Christian Wolff’s deductive “scientific paradigm.”^{Footnote 63} As Klaus-Gert Lutterbeck (Reference Lutterbeck2002) underlined, the more geometrico approach to moral philosophy and political philosophy in particular was an essential rather than accidental character of the natural law doctrine. Although Genovesi’s sources are varied and he used them eclectically, Genovesi’s particular version of natural law was deeply influenced by Wolff’s. In particular, Wolff’s conception of bonum as “whatever by nature adds to the perfection of man” must have pleased Genovesi, because it entailed a direct relationship between natural law and man’s improvement in this world.^{Footnote 64}

Not surprisingly, Wolff saw the role of the sovereign in the promotion of common welfare (a good translation of felicitas publica). His laws, in order to be just, must contribute to the perfection of his subjects. The sovereigns “are not allowed to do what pleases them, they must instead, exactly like those who hold a limited power, look for the common welfare and security in order not to become tyrants.”^{Footnote 65} They could not rule at their will. Their will, instead, should be ruled by the necessity of promoting the happiness of their subjects.

But, within this broadly teleological Aristotelian perspective, the stress on the natural role of the sovereign distinguished the two Italian authors from Aristotelian practical philosophy. As we saw, Muratori and Genovesi did not really distinguish the paternal rule within the family from the political rule in the civitas. While the Greek philosopher carefully distinguished the two, Muratori invoked the “Governo Economico,” and Genovesi called the head of the household “Chief and Prince of his family,” and the sovereign, the “Father and Sovereign of the people.”^{Footnote 66}

This could look like a mere “lip service” to the Bourbon King in whose name Genovesi was teaching, but it was actually a very strong statement, setting Genovesi very explicitly aside from John Locke’s ideas as expressed in the two treaties on government. Genovesi’s proposal fell instead within the category of the pastoral mode of government that Michel Foucault so interestingly discussed in his 1978 course at the Collège de France, ^{Footnote 67} citing Antoine de Monchrestien.

The very notion of economia civile is strongly connotated, but not in the way Bruni and Zamagni would want it to be. The difference between economia civile and economia politica is merely nominal, civile being the Italianization of the Latin civilis, from civitas, while politica derives instead from the Greek polis, usually translated as civitas in Latin.^{Footnote 68} The peculiarity of economia civile and economia politica, since Montchrestien in 1615, was the conflation of family and politics, of material wealth and the princely duties, of oikos and polis. Genovesi introduced a definitional twist, as we saw, whereby he could recompose the traditional Aristotelian economics and politics into new categories, merging part of economics and part of politics into economia civile. Civil (or political) economy is the way to govern the “economy” of the state, of the civitas or polis, as a father would rule (nomein) his family (oikos).

As the eighteenth century advanced, felicitas publica came to replace almost completely ragion di stato as the the yardstick of any good government. Instead of seeking for outward expansion by means of wars as much ruinous for the winner as for the losers, princes should foster the happiness of their subjects with the help of “Lettere e Scienze.”^{Footnote 69} The Giornale dei Letterati could confidently claim in 1771:

And wealth became an essential part of politics, as in Genovesi’s definition of Economia civile. The Economia civile so defined went together with a somewhat interventionist conception of the tasks of the state that resembles very much the Cameralist tradition. It is not a coincidence, of course, since Muratori, Genovesi, and the Cameralists moved within the natural law tradition.^{Footnote 71} Obviously, Genovesi was not a Neapolitan Cameralist, but, in mapping likenesses and differences between different schools of political economy in Europe, the very concept of public happiness signals a fundamental affinity between German and Italian forms of political thinking, a common paradigm of sorts.^{Footnote 72}

VI. INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOHLFAHRT

The Oekonomie-, Polizei-, and Kameralwissenschaft stemmed from the natural law doctrine of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in Germany. Since 1727, they were taught together at the University of Halle, eventually also in Frankfurt an der Oder and elsewhere in Germany, and they usually go under the common name of Kameralwissenschaft, the sciences of the curia principis. They present the historian with a multiplicity of books on Gluckseligkeit and Wohlfahrt, two different ways of translating the Latin felicitas. Towards the end of the century, the unity of Kameralwissenschaften gave way to separate sciences: political economy, administrative science, political science, etc.^{Footnote 73}

The Kameralwissenschaft of eighteenth-century Germany speaks the language of happiness, but not of individual happiness. The happiness of the prince’s subjects, “die Glückseligkeit der Unterthanen”—as a typical catch-phrase of the period expressed it—was the result of the prince’s benign rule, of his obedience to the principles of good government discovered by the Kameralwisseschaft. The origin of German Cameralism lay in the concept of Policey or Polizei. Since the early seventeenth century, Polizei was the secular alternative that German thinkers could offer to Staatsraeson. While preserving the autonomy of politics from religion, Polizei provided the rule of the state with a moral justification: the common welfare of the subjects.^{Footnote 74} While Staatsraeson led to wars of expansion and internally to a growing tax burden imposed on the princely subjects, the Polizei would guide the prince and his ministers towards a peaceful and wise management of the resources that allowed a general plenty.^{Footnote 75} The Kameralwissenschaft of the eighteenth century inherited this combination of the traditional Aristotelian politics and economics.

The chairs of Cameralistik that were established in German universities in the early decades of the eighteenth century (Halle and Frankfurt an der Oder were inaugurated in 1727, Justi began teaching in Wien in 1754, and Joseph von Sonnenfels in Wien in 1763, while Genovesi’s appointment as professor of Commercio and meccanica dates from 1754) were meant to teach the future administrators of the German states how to foster public happiness in the different branches of government. Johan Gottlob von Justi, who was only four years younger than Genovesi and probably the most important author of the Kameralwissenschaft of the eighteenth century, claimed that “the ultimate purpose [Endzweck] of the economic and cameral sciences is the common happiness [gemeinschaftliche Glückseligkeit]” and that “hence follows the first and universal principle, namely: all the governmental activities of a state must be so ordered that by means of them the happiness of the state may be promoted.”^{Footnote 76}

The sovereign was to take care of innumerable aspects of the life of his subjects. He took over from the church the task of assisting the poor and the disciplining of anti-social elements.^{Footnote 77} The taking over of these competencies by the state is traditionally interpreted as the transition from the Staendestaat to the modern absolutist state of the eighteenth century; in any case, it marks a significant step towards the kind of centralization that the Neapolitan Regalismo would have hoped for in Naples.^{Footnote 78} The new Kameralwissenschaft attributed to the sovereign a leveling power: the intermediate bodies of the nobility, which had been so important for Montesquieu, were to lose their specific individuality and differentiation in a substantial equality of the sovereign’s subjects when it came to matters of taxation and property.

On the other hand, the sovereign became, according to Friedrich der Grosse’s celebrated bon mot, “the first servant of the state” in his obligation to foster public happiness.^{Footnote 79} This also implied that the power of the absolute monarch was bound by his recognition of the laws that ruled society and the production of plenty. For this reason, the knowledge of the economic, demographic, and military situation of states (i.e., statistics) ranked very prominently in German universities. At the end of the eighteenth century, August Ludwig Schlözer would famously say that “statistics and despotism cannot stand together,”^{Footnote 80} meaning that a full knowledge of the conditions of the state would make visible to the sovereign and the enlightened public all possible mistakes in the management of the state. Also, Justi’s concern with investigative travels and with getting acquainted with the economic life of the Austrian provinces reflects the same preoccupation with factual knowledge that we find in Genovesi’s appeal to the provincial youth and then in the German-inspired works of one of Genovesi’s latest pupils, Giuseppe Maria Galanti.^{Footnote 81}

A good polity, “una nazione ben polita,” was Genovesi’s ideal, as it was the Cameralists’. But, while a good polity appeared a concrete possibility for the political scientists of German university, for Genovesi, it was a sort of utopia that he imagined realized in China, where an enlightened monarch reigned under the rule of natural law, assisted by his wise mandarins.^{Footnote 82} To Genovesi (and to Wolff), the Chinese government appeared not to be restricted by human counter-powers that made private interest prevail over the public good, but by a law intrinsic to things themselves. The discourse on taxation is a good index of their aspiration to a sovereign power that would be unlimited except by nature itself. Both the Cameralists and Genovesi underlined the necessity for the sovereign not to deplete by taxation the real sources of a kingdom’s wealth; namely, the trade and industry of the subject.

The discourse on public happiness that was central to the Economia civile, as well as to the Cameralist tradition, differs therefore from the Scottish discourse on the invisible hand and the pursuit of individual happiness as much as the German differs from the English tradition of natural law.

This difference manifests itself most evidently when we consider the destination and function of Muratori’s and Genovesi’s books. Muratori’s Della Felicità (tellingly dedicated to a prince of the Holy Roman Empire) outlines the scheme of a syllabus for the education of future sovereigns and their ministers. The book is entirely didactic. If it is not a handbook in itself, it sets the headings of a course in the Polizeiwissenschaften. ^{Footnote 83} Genovesi taught the Neapolitan youth how to contribute to national welfare as agents of the Neapolitan state. The service of the Neapolitan nation, then, could take different forms. It could be fulfilled in the capital city, in the king’s direct service. But it could be carried out in the kingdom’s provinces as well, for instance within the provincial academies that Genovesi expected to be established and, in a few cases, were actually established by his pupils. As the studies by Elvira Chiosi and Pasquale Matarazzo have showed, the Neapolitan government imagined a sort of ramified structure for his academies, with the Royal Academy in Naples at the core of a network of provincial academies.^{Footnote 84}

The aim of these institutions was not the promotion of individual happiness. Unlike the great thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, who lived in a parliamentary system, Genovesi wrote in an absolute monarchy, and his message was intended for the prince’s future “mandarins.” The problem of public happiness therefore was not how the pursuit of individual happiness could have a collectively desirable result, but how a country’s rulers could bring about the positive welfare of their subjects.

VII. PUBLIC HAPPINESS: POLITICAL ECONOMY IN SUPPORT OF ABSOLUTISM

This article is intended to set the topic of public happiness in its right context; namely, that of the political and economic thought of the eighteenth century. What is left of Bruni’s (and Zamagni’s) original thesis? Relatively little, I believe. The concept of public happiness appeared to be not so immediately connected to Aristotle’s theory of virtue as they assume, and a closer examination of the texts does not support the idea of public happiness as something that can be achieved only by reciprocal help among the citizens. Instead, Muratori and Genovesi were fully aware of the often tragic contrast between individual happiness and the truly heroic pursuit of public happiness. They stressed therefore the importance of sovereign action in preserving the subjects from a certain number of collective evils: war, famine, and injustice first and foremost.

The roots of the discourse on public happiness are to be found, rather than in Aristotle himself, in the nominally Aristotelian but deeply innovative doctrine of German natural law, in authors such as Samuel von Pufendorf and Christian Wolff. By discerning the roots of public happiness, I believe that I helped to recast felicità pubblica within the historiography on the eighteenth century. It was not a specificity of the “national Italian school,” but a common feature of the monarchic discourse over a broad area of Europe that centered on the old Holy Roman Empire, in Italy and Germany.

This is not to deny either the local peculiarity of the Italian-speaking Enlightenment in its internal multiplicity or the strong influence of French and English economic literature (the latter more often than not mediated through French translations) on Genovesi and the Neapolitan School.^{Footnote 85} The notion of an imperial space of knowledge stretching north and south of the Alps (with ramifications in linguistically affine territories) seems, nevertheless, to be helpful in this case.^{Footnote 86}

As a consequence, public happiness appeared as a part of the quest for legitimization that characterized “absolute” monarchies in the age of reforms. In the Neapolitan context, it stressed the aspiration for a government that was not constrained by historically determined counter-powers, such as the feudal lords, the church, or law itself, but found the only limit to its action in the nature of things themselves, in the laws that regulate nature and society, and in the greater good of the citizens.

Both Genovesi and Muratori did not believe that private vices would turn into public virtues. They believed instead in the active intervention of the state to bring about public virtues and to educate virtuously its subjects.^{Footnote 87} The primary aim of writers of political economy, whether in Modena or Naples, was therefore the education of the future ministers of the sovereign, the future functionaries, men of letters, and provincial notables in the principles of the economic government. Their task would be to advise the well-intentioned ruler on the best means to bring about public happiness. This was “the ideal citizen”; this, the individual contribution to public happiness.^{Footnote 88}

Finally, is public happiness a positive model for our days? Certainly not in the way Bruni and Zamagni would like us to think. Its relationship with reciprocity, friendship, and relational happiness are not those the two authors postulate. Due to its centrality in the discourse of eighteenth-century monarchies, before and during the classic age of Enlightened Absolutism,^{Footnote 89} public happiness certainly deserves a much more thorough treatment than the sketchy remarks that I have listed here, but it also deserves more contextual awareness than the kind of superficial cherry-picking quest for ancestors that was carried out by Bruni and Zamagni. All those who are trying to adopt the categories of public happiness and civil economy for their economic theory should be aware of the real connotations of these notions.