II. THE NEAPOLITAN CIVIL ECONOMY

Before exploring Dragonetti’s notion of virtues and awards, it is necessary first to sketch the main features of the Civil Economy tradition, the cultural environment in which Dragonetti developed his book.

Recent authors^{Footnote 7} have called attention to the negative reputation throughout Europe of pre-modern Neapolitan society because of the erosion of civic virtues there. In particular, individual pursuit of private honor had replaced mutual trust among citizens and in public authorities—a change attributed especially to the Spanish viceroys. At the same time, since the 1730s, Naples had been one of the capitals of the European Enlightenment, an era of reform and civic hope. Also during the mid-eighteenth century, Genovesi began developing the Civil Economy tradition.

Antonio Genovesi (1713–1769) can rightly be considered the founder of the eighteenth-century Civil Economy tradition in Italy. Like Adam Smith, Genovesi began as a philosopher and, in the early 1750s, turned his attention to social and economic matters.^{Footnote 8} Also like Smith, Genovesi considered civil friendship and reciprocity (not just simple sociality) to be essential components of human nature. In his philosophical and economic works, in line with the classical tradition that runs from Aristotle to Aquinas, he stated repeatedly that “no human condition is to be regarded as more unhappy than that of being alone, segregated from all commerce with our fellows” (2013, p. 348).

Genovesi, and after him the whole of Civil Economy (which can be rightly considered as an attempt to interpret the modern market economy within the Christian classical tradition), sees market economic interactions as relationships of mutual assistance, neither impersonal nor egoistic. Indeed, the market itself and commerce are understood as expressions of reciprocity, which, for him, is the general law of civil society.^{Footnote 9} This vision of market exchange as mutual assistance is present throughout Genovesi’s works, but it emerges in a particularly effective way in his analysis of trust, or “public trust,” and of commerce. Genovesi reconciles his ambivalent attitude towards the civilizing role of commerce by considering reciprocity to be the true nature of market and trade, as he later makes clear (Id., p. 348).

In fact, “public trust” is a key phrase in Genovesi’s Civil Economy, one that he considered the true precondition of economic development and that was subsequently accepted within the Civil Economy tradition. “Confidence is the soul of commerce ... without it, every part of its edifice collapses on its own” (Filangieri Reference Filangieri2003, p. 93).^{Footnote 10} Thus, in the Civil Economy tradition, public trust is the primary resource for economic development. Indeed, Genovesi singled out lack of public trust as the principal reason for underdevelopment in the Kingdom of Naples, which had abundant private trust but, in his view, lacked general public trust. A few years later, Gaetano Filangieri also emphasized this; he considered the primary resources of a nation to be “confidence in the government, confidence in the judges, and confidence in other citizens” (2003, p. 5). As did most eighteenth-century philosophers (e.g., Montesquieu, Kant, Vico, Hume, Smith), Civil Economy also stressed that without cultivation of public trust, the market does not develop and the society remains feudal (Genovesi Reference Genovesi and Daldegan2013, p. 341). For Genovesi, therefore, public trust is the basis for all the development (or, if lacking, the underdevelopment) of a nation. Without public trust, there is no economic and social development. In chapter X of Book II, which represents a sort of “core” for the entire Lezioni, Genovesi shows how public trust is essentially a matter of genuine reciprocity. In Genovesi’s theory, unlike Smith’s Political Economy, the market is a place of genuine sociality or, in typical Italian Enlightenment language, of fraternity. In fact, public trust is understood as an essential part of both the market and the civil society, hence the typical expression civil economy.^{Footnote 11}

It is within this vision of society based on reciprocity and civic virtues that the work of Giacinto Dragonetti also must be situated.

III. NOT ONLY PUNISHMENTS: DRAGONETTI ON AWARDS

Dragonetti’s Introduction provides a clear point of entry to his vision of virtues and awards: “We have made numberless laws to punish crimes, and not one is established to reward virtue” (1769, p. 13).^{Footnote 12}

Although the title (On Virtues and Rewards) may be interpreted as an attempt to counter Beccaria’s argument (On Crimes and Punishments),^{Footnote 13} an accurate reading of the two books reveals the same specific intention: to address an aspect that had been overlooked. Furthermore, Beccaria was not totally oblivious to the positive implications of rewarding virtue, but he does confine this topic to the margins of his inquiry. The theme of rewards arises towards the end of On Crimes and Punishments, in a section about crime prevention:

Beccaria’s analysis of “prizes” contains yet another comment on the importance of education: “Finally, the surest but hardest way to prevent crime is to improve education” (Ibid.), an instrument closely linked to the reward of virtue, an issue dear to most Enlightenment thinkers (especially Genovesi). Beccaria and others mention the reward of virtue but do not explore it further,^{Footnote 14} whereas Dragonetti, inspired by a more radical and far-reaching approach, devoted his analysis to this disregarded issue. He envisioned an entire system of laws built around the idea of rewarding virtue (particularly “political virtue”), a code of virtue that would parallel the penal code. “The Roman law-givers knew the necessity of recompenses, but contented themselves with hinting at them, without courage to form their code”^{Footnote 15} (1769, p. 13).

It is also clear that Dragonetti was not trying to deny the importance of punishment; like Genovesi, he recognized its crucial role. But Dragonetti was convinced that concentrating principally or exclusively on punishment would not be enough to get the Kingdom of Naples back on a path of civil and economic growth.

More generally, the different positions of Beccaria and Dragonetti can also be explained in terms of their respective philosophical traditions. In fact, while Beccaria’s framework is essentially consistent with the first elements of utilitarian doctrine, Dragonetti has to be interpreted within the classical tradition of virtue ethics (in line with Aristotle, Cicero, and Thomas Aquinas). Beccaria echoes Hobbes in his characterization of the state of nature:

In Dragonetti, however, the vision of sociality and the essence of the social contract that emerge correspond to Genovesi and the Thomistic–Aristotelian view of civic virtues as natural to humankind. Dragonetti hoped to revive interest in the reward of civic virtue that had characterized the Roman republicanism of Cicero and Plutarch, and that emerges also in certain expressions of the Lockean tradition.^{Footnote 16}

In this classical tradition, a virtue (areté ) is an individual disposition or character trait, defined generally relative to a particular domain, according to the telos or, in contemporary terminology, the intrinsic nature of that domain. Furthermore, the logic behind the classical view of virtue diverges from both instrumentalist and consequentialist accounts. A virtuous person pursues areté for an intrinsic reason, not for the sake of pleasure or other material rewards. At the same time, a virtuous action may indeed also yield pleasure and material rewards, but they are an indirect result, a sort of by-product of the virtuous conduct (Bruni and Sugden Reference Bruni and Sugden2013).

Therefore, there is nothing in the classical theory of virtue that prevents applying virtues (dispositions or character traits that help to promote excellence—areté—and approval in the economic domain) to the market, as Dragonetti does (and as most communitarian literature today does not). And, if that’s the case, how can virtue truly be rewarded? More to the point, how does Dragonetti suggest that virtue be rewarded?

First, with more emphasis than the classical theory of virtue, Dragonetti associates virtue with the direct and intentional pursuit of public good (as distinct from, although not in contrast to, one’s personal well-being). In Aristotle, for instance, the common good is pursued by performing individual virtuous actions, so there is no contrast between individual and public good. Dragonetti, instead, emphasizes the intentional search for the public good, even when this requires the sacrifice of individual gains. His approach to virtue, very close to the ethics of Republicanism, was surely influenced by the history of Europe and by circumstances in the Kingdom of Naples at his time, where freeriding and the pursuit of individual privileges were jeopardizing public wealth and happiness. “Hence the name of Virtue to every action that respects the interest of others, or the preference of another’s well-being to our own” (1769, p. 19).

According to Dragonetti, therefore, the sheer pursuit of personal interest, despite being natural and not to be disparaged as a vice (as Mandeville would), should not be called “virtuous” per se. Virtue requires effort to reach results that go beyond one’s private interest. In the Italian edition of 1768 (in Modena), Dragonetti suggests that God is good rather than virtuous, because doing good requires no effort from God. The 1769 English edition states something similar:

Serving the common good, therefore, is a sufficient condition for virtue, whereas effort and sacrifice are necessary attributes (they are also non-spontaneous, unlike the pursuit of pleasure and self-interest). Thus, according to Dragonetti, “Many have ambiguously given the name of Virtue to actions that result from mere natural, religious, or civil laws, and whose proper title is Duties” (ibid.).

His vision of virtue is consistent with his view of rewards:

“Recompense,” therefore, is a reward for an action that goes “beyond” what private and social contracts normally assign; it is the prize awarded for a free act deliberately intended for the common good: “It is true, that all the members of a state owe it those services which the laws ordain; but it is as true, that its citizens ought to be distinguished and rewarded in proportion to their gratuitous services. Virtue sufficient for itself is not the virtue of man” (1769, p. 27, my italics).

Expressions like “gratuitous services,” or “virtue sufficient for itself is not the virtue of man,” offer clues about other elements in Dragonetti’s view of civic virtue. Virtue is a matter of freedom, and its recompense cannot be set by ordinary social and private contracts. At the same time, Dragonetti is stating that an ethics of civic virtue in which awards are not publicly acknowledged, or where they are exclusively intrinsic (“virtue sufficient for itself”), is not sustainable because “it is not the virtue of man”; otherwise, it would be super-human and, hence, unfit for civic life (this passage contains an echo of Aristotle’s “god or beast”). Unlike most contemporary accounts of civic virtue, which seem to favor an intrinsic notion of rewards,^{Footnote 17} Dragonetti assigns the reward of virtue a civic and “public” nature somehow external to the virtuous agent: “Nor ought it to be objected, that virtue, in proposing its price, loses its dignity and becomes mercenary” (1769, p. 27).

In other words, it is possible to reward civic virtues without the risk of reducing the gratuitousness of virtuous acts to the mere counter-service of an exchange (“mercenary”), which would otherwise compromise the spontaneous, genuine, non-mandatory, essentially free character of virtue. This issue has arisen frequently (and controversially) in the lively debate over the proper reward for “vocational” activities.^{Footnote 18}

IV. REWARDS AND AWARDS

This discussion has approached—but has not yet reached—a complete understanding of what Dragonetti has in mind by invoking the importance of rewarding—or awarding—virtue. Contemporary economists will immediately recall the notion of incentives, a tool used in economic theory—mostly in monetary or material form—to induce an effort from agents by aligning their interests with those of the organization (principal) for which they work.

Actually, the (still preliminary) contemporary research on awards demonstrates that awards are something different from the contemporary idea of incentives or rewards. Bruno Frey and Susanne Neckermann point out the main characteristics of awards (and the principal differences from economics’ standard incentives), including, among others, the low “objective” cost of awards and their high subjective value, their relational and symbolic value, and the complementarity between awards and intrinsic motivation (Neckermann and Frey Reference Neckermann, Cueni and Frey2009, Kosfeld and Nekermann Reference Kosfeld and Neckermann2011). These features of awards or prizes (i.e., medals; academic, artistic, civic, or military awards), however, do not help much in illustrating Dragonetti’s theory of awards, as this discussion will reveal. Another avenue for exploring what Dragonetti meant lies in the difference between the English terms rewards and awards.

As mentioned in the Introduction, in the first 1769 English edition, the Italian word premi was translated as “rewards.” In contemporary English and in economic culture, however, “rewards” does not convey fully what Dragonetti intended. Premi, in fact, does contain in part what the contemporary term “rewards” signifies (as will be shown); but the full connotations of premi are better captured by the term awards. Generally, awards acknowledge intrinsically good activities, and, within a reciprocal or contractual relationship, are not perceived as an expected recompense that has been established ex-ante (a quid pro quo or synallagmatic structure).

Rewards—as demonstrated by the meaning of its prefix “re” (as in reciprocity, return, restitution, from the Latin rectus, “straight,” or “right”)—are expected and anticipated ex-ante for performing a given action. Of course, any human social act is somehow an act of reciprocity. When we do something directed towards others, we pretend, expect, desire, hope for some form of return or reciprocal response. Not only the reward, especially that peculiar form of reward that in economics is called incentive (monetary or extrinsic), is calculated and fully foreseen ex-ante, but usually the reward becomes the total or principal motivation for performing a given action (Grant Reference Grant2012). On the other hand, awards, such as those for civic, artistic, or scientific accomplishments, generally do not supply the motivation for such activities, even though a given activity may be associated with a possible award. Receiving an award does not supply sufficient motivation because it cannot be foreseen and calculated ex-ante in a rational cost–benefit analysis. In other words, rewards-incentives create a given action (that without the incentive would not be there), whereas awards-premi recognize the virtue-excellence present in a person, action, work.^{Footnote 19}

For these reasons, premi, the eighteenth-century Italian word Dragonetti chose for the title of his book, is better translated as “awards” (the Latin premi, in fact, literally means “prizes”), even though Dragonetti’s use of the term also conveys certain dimensions of “rewards” as it is currently used (as we see later).^{Footnote 20} Actually, the connotation of “awards” in contemporary usage is contained in premi as Dragonetti used it, although his emphasis is much more “social” (or civil) than it is in the modern analysis of both rewards (as incentives in economics) and awards.

Apart from the nature of motivations, another key difference between the modern economics’ “incentives” and Dragonetti’s premi is the contrast between individual and social elements. Incentives are individuals-based, designed around private self-interest (yielding some benefit for the common good only as an indirect or unintentional effect). An incentive scheme has a purely extrinsic nature, because of its private principal–agent relation. Premi awards, instead, have a public or civic nature; they are given for the intentional performance of an action that contributes to the common good. They must be assigned publicly, in presence of an audience, the value of such an award being directly proportional to its publicity and social approval, being the ceremony an important part of the award. The greater part of the value assigned to an award is social approbation and recognition.

Dragonetti’s notion of premi includes another crucial element. In harmony with the Civil Economy tradition, he claims that actions directed toward the public good do not conflict, at least in principle, with self-interest (despite the two having separate and not necessarily interrelated objectives); nor is the public good in any way incompatible with individual interest or incentives. Awards go hand in hand with rewards. Considering the Roman republic or the Greek polis, Dragonetti notices that “Public grandeur was not concentrated in a few, but expanded itself with such power, that each private interest was dissolved in the public, and each ray of the public reflected on its members” (1769, p. 29). Hence, his own definition of rewards: “Rewards alone tie the wayward interest of individuals to the public, and keep the eye of man intent on general good” (p. 31).

Therefore, although he acknowledges the distinction between acts motivated by virtue and those motivated by self-interest, Dragonetti never considered these two kinds of actions as opposed or in any way incompatible. It is fair to say that, in his view, a good society ought to be able to reconcile self-interest and virtue, rewards and awards, contracts and gratuitousness.

Consider one further step.

The structure of his book also offers other significant clues to Dragonetti’s notion of rewards (not only awards). Its central section presents several specific recommendations for rewarding virtue. He sets them out so that high reward not be attributed to conduct with only marginal virtue or only a minimal benefit to society; and, conversely, so that truly virtuous conduct not receive too modest a reward. As Dragonetti states, “It is more pernicious to reward improperly than not at all” (1769, p. 39).

It is worthwhile to note that the Treatise was conceived against the backdrop of animated anti-feudal polemics,^{Footnote 21} which Dragonetti clearly had in mind and which form the central theme of his later work, On the Origin of Fiefs in the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily (1788). This work formally assesses the juridical controversy over the inheritability and alienability of fiefs in Sicily and Naples, at the same time maintaining the reformist aspirations typical of the Civil Economy tradition.^{Footnote 22} This broad cultural perspective provides the backdrop against which can be unfolded the deeper meaning, still relevant today, of the theoretical debate concerning rewards and virtues.

At the heart of Civil Economy lies the conviction that feudal society could not lead to prosperity or civic development. The feudal system promotes the perverse reward of acquired privileges and discourages genuinely virtuous behavior. The following passage illustrates this point clearly:

A key consequence of the anti-feudal polemics is an attitude of praise towards the arts and commerce, a trait that can be truly appreciated only in the light of the overall project of the Neapolitan and the entire European Enlightenment, whose mission was to build a post-feudal liberal society in which the proper reward of true virtue (and the discouragement and punishment of false virtue) might eventually provide an impetus for a new phase of civic life and economic development. Many remarkable statements by Genovesi, Filangieri, and other authors of the European and Neapolitan Enlightenment reveal this common anti-feudal sentiment.^{Footnote 24}

In line with most of the European Enlightenment, the Neapolitan tradition considers economic activity to be a genuine expression of civic life. It sees commerce as a civilizing factor. Like the fifteenth-century Italian civic humanists, Genovesi and the Neapolitans see commercial activity as an expression of civic virtue, and civic life as the place where virtues could be expressed to their fullest.

The vision of the economy as a sign of civilization runs through Genovesi and all Neapolitan writings. Expressing a thought in a tradition that runs from Montesquieu to Verri, from Vico to Kant (Hirschman 1977), in the Lezioni, Genovesi even writes that one of the fruits of commerce “is to bring the trading nations to peace. . . . War and commerce are as opposite as motion and quiet” (2013, p. 201). And, in most of his theory, commerce is considered one of the main tools in creating the civilization and wealth of a nation. But, in the last years of his life, his attitude towards commerce his attitude towards commerce evolved and became more ambivalent in ways that deserve particular attention. His sentence in Lezioni on the spirit of commerce is well known: “The spirit of commerce is that of the conquests. Barbarous people conquer people and lands; trading people conquer riches” (Ib., p. 179).

This sentence is important for understanding Genovesi’s critique of Montesquieu’s thesis regarding “the doux commerce” in his annotations to the Neapolitan edition of the L’Esprit des lois (1777). His annotations for books XX and XXI of Montesquieu’s masterpiece note that “commerce is the great source of wars” (Genovesi 1777, II, p. 195), which seems to contradict many other statements in the Lezioni, some of them quoted above. Why? Genovesi composed the annotations to L’Esprit des lois towards the end of his life, in the same period during which he wrote the Lezioni. Since that is the case, there must be a consistency between his theory of commerce and his vision of the market based on the law of reciprocity. The same annotation that contains his statement on commerce as the “source of wars,” in fact, a few lines later mentions that “If two nations trade together for reciprocal needs, these needs are in opposition to war, not the spirit of commerce” (Ib). As De Mas correctly notes in his comment on Genovesi’s edition of Montesquieu, “Trade founded on reciprocal needs strengthens peace because it joins nations; but the conquest of commercial ports and of centers of commerce is source of wars” (De Mas Reference De Mas1971, p. 158). Reflecting on the commercial enterprises of past and present empires, Genovesi writes: “The driving principle of such enterprises is not commerce, but the consciousness of their power, greed. Commerce is a mere instrument” (Genovesi 1777, vol. II, pp. 198–199). Therefore, the later Genovesi distinguishes between the commerce of nations and its spirit (which, for him, is intricately connected with military power and strategies for political conquest), and commerce among peoples, in particular domestic commerce (based on reciprocity among equals, expressions of different needs). He maintains that commerce among nations (as it was actually conducted during the mercantilist system) generally was not an expression of reciprocal advantage or assistance, but unilateral exploitation. This interpretation runs through all of chapter XVII in the first book of Lezioni. Thanks to the critical edition of the text as well as to M. L. Perna’s editorial annotations, it is possible to trace the evolution of Genovesi’s evaluation of the spirit of commerce from the first draft of his treatise (Elementi di commercio, written in 1758) up to the second Neapolitan edition of the Lezioni (1769), where his negative judgment of the spirit of commerce is tougher than in the 1765 first edition and endorses commerce theses close to Rousseau.^{Footnote 25}

At the beginning of his career as an economist, his evaluation was more positive, but became much more elaborated and generally critical toward the end. Particularly in his latest works, Genovesi became more aware of the darker possibilities of international trade, an aspect that became more and more significant within his notion of Civil Economy.^{Footnote 26}

This internal evolution at the very end of Genovesi’s life did not affect Dragonetti, who wrote his Trattato in 1765. Therefore, Dragonetti’s praise for the virtues of commerce has to be read in the spirit of the younger Genovesi. Dragonetti never formulated an actual and complete theory of the relationship between virtues and awards/rewards, nor did he ever lay out the theoretical mechanisms for rewarding virtues, a shortcoming that marks the greatest limit of his work. Nevertheless, several of his insights can be read and appreciated within the general framework of Civil Economy.

V. MARKET AND COMMERCE AS PROPER REWARDS TO VIRTUES

A key point that makes Dragonetti’s ideas relevant in the contemporary ethical debate concerning markets is the connection he makes between markets and civic virtues. As he uses the term, premi conveys, as seen, a meaning associated with both award and reward, although in an unusual and original way.

Dragonetti, as well as the tradition of Civil Economy as a whole, regarded commerce as a key opportunity for cultivating and rewarding civic virtue. If, in the Civil Economy tradition, the market is construed as a form of “mutual assistance,” then commerce itself becomes a virtue because by trading and contributing to developing the market, individuals are ultimately contributing to the common good. Moreover, in eighteenth-century Naples, starting a commercial activity required the ability to take risks, and this gesture too may be interpreted as a token of public virtue, since the entire community benefits from its results. From a Civil Economy perspective, the market is a place where virtues can be encountered and cultivated. Both market and trade are essential to public happiness. As Dragonetti notes, “Commerce is the reciprocal communication of the produce and industry of various countries.... The citizens of earth carry on a war of industry against each other, and where that ceases, there the supports of life decay” (1769, pp. 113, 121).

For this reason, society ought to recognize commercial virtues and publicly reward virtuous merchants, as in ancient Rome where the best merchants were allowed to join the equestrian order. “Commerce influences manners. Its spirit is that of frugality, moderation, prudence, tranquility, order. Whilst these subsist, riches are harmless. Commerce has everywhere propagated the study of social habits.... If these are the advantages of the commerce, the trader should not want his reward ^{Footnote 27} (p. 131, my italics).

Neglecting to reward commercial virtues would discourage market transactions and, therefore, diminish the market as an institution; and without markets, there can be no public happiness. Dragonetti treats the subjects of war and navigation in similar terms (p. 78 ff.). Without adequate naval protection for trade, there can be no safe commerce; therefore, defense should not be left to mercenary troops. Instead, the pure military virtues that keep the state safe and, hence, free and happy should be rewarded. A similar attitude emerges at the conclusion of an unpublished letter from Dragonetti to his brother Gianbattista, in response to a question concerning the connection between the first and the second part of his book: “If I did not discuss agriculture, war, navigation and commerce, that are the … main human virtues, what would my … little treatise be worth? (Dragonetti, in Bruni Reference Bruni2010).^{Footnote 28}

Dragonetti considered commerce to be part of the system for the reward of virtue. It is virtuous to satisfy other people’s needs, and, by facilitating mutually advantageous transactions, the market rewards virtue.^{Footnote 29}

His chapter on commerce states:

One possible and legitimate reading of such passages on commerce, which corresponds to a fundamental concept in the Civil Economy tradition, is that the market serves as a key mechanism for rewarding virtues.

From that perspective, market and trade are perfectly moral or virtuous; mutual advantage, reciprocity, and morality go hand in hand. Although the Civil Economy tradition emphasizes virtue and its reward, it follows a different cultural path from the one followed by “communitarian” authors such as Anderson (Reference Anderson1993), Walzer (Reference Walzer1983), or McIntyre (Reference MacIntyre1981). These authors see a contrast between true moral relationship and standard economic or market interactions. For Dragonetti (and Genovesi), however, the market and virtues are fully consistent with one another (Bruni and Sugden Reference Bruni and Sugden2013).

Only one sentence in Dragonetti’s small book has achieved widespread notoriety: the one Thomas Paine cited in Common Sense. Paine seemed to take particular pleasure in the political aspects of the pamphlet, and he quoted (on p. 30 of Common Sense) the following passage:

Dragonetti’s emphasis on civic virtues and their awards/rewards has not generated (as often happens) an illiberal or authoritarian vision of politics and democracy. In his political project of reforming the Kingdom of Naples, virtues, public happiness, and freedom go hand in hand, a vision that may put Dragonetti alongside liberal proponents of freedom, happiness, and virtues, such as T. Paine or J. S. Mill.

VI. THE UNDERGROUND RIVER OF CIVIL ECONOMY

What became of Dragonetti and the Civil Economy tradition within contemporary social sciences? That tradition obviously did not enter mainstream thought during the nineteenth or in the twentieth century, not even in Italy, where it was submerged under a strong wave of criticism headed in particular by Francesco Ferrara, the most influential Italian economist of the twentieth century. In the introduction to the third volume of his Biblioteca dell’Economista (First Series), Ferrara (recognizing Genovesi as the first among them) claims: “The merit for the foundation of economics goes to the English Smith, or to the French Turgot, not to Genovesi, Verri, or Beccaria” (1852, p. xxxvi). According to him, the proper science of economics was not to be found in the works of the classic Italian authors, but in those from abroad. A later generation of economists, including Pantaleoni and especially Pareto, maintained this outward-looking gaze rather than looking more deeply into the tradition of Civil Economy.^{Footnote 31}

Through the eighteenth century, Dragonetti’s book achieved widespread notice all over Europe, thanks also to Gravier, the publisher. Later editions were published in Venice (1767), Modena (1768), and Palermo (1787). It was translated into French (printed in Naples in 1767), English (1769), German (1769), and Russian (1769). In some editions, it was bound together with Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments. A Spanish edition dated 1836, translated by the famous jurist Ramon Salas of the school of Salamanca, includes Beccaria’s text. Other editions may well exist. Not surprisingly, the school of Bentham also mentioned Dragonetti, but in a highly critical tone (he received strong criticism particularly from Dumont; see Dragonetti Reference Dragonetti1847, p. 116).

In the early nineteenth century, Melchiorre Gioja was the first in Italy to take up Dragonetti’s issue again openly, in Dei meriti e delle ricompense (Of Merits and Rewards). His introduction acknowledges Dragonetti’s previous work on this subject. Various versions of both books (Dragonetti and Gioja) followed in the first half of the nineteenth century.^{Footnote 32} After the many-sided and controversial figure of Gioja linked himself to the topic of virtues and rewards, however, such interest disappeared.

Dragonetti bound the topic of inquiry tightly to Genovesi’s school of civic virtues. All of Lezioni di economia civile was constructed around this theme.^{Footnote 33} The Apulian Giuseppe Palmieri, who belonged to the same Neapolitan tradition, dedicated an entire chapter of Riflessioni sulla Felicità Pubblica relativamente al Regno di Napoli (1788) to virtue.^{Footnote 34}

When Genovesi passed away in 1769, his system of economic thought was still unfolding (at the time, he was preparing a third edition of the Lezioni). Somehow, his death halted Dragonetti’s investigation concerning the very same topic. He never carried out the project outlined in the Treatise, nor did anyone else. The story might have been different had Genovesi worked a few more years on his Lessons, which never achieved a status comparable to that of the Wealth of Nations but could, perhaps, be compared to Smith’s Lectures in Jurisprudence, an intermediate step between moral philosophy and economics (Bruni Reference Bruni2006).

Some handbooks of the history of economic thought still mention the ideas of Genovesi and Filangieri, but, after Ferrara and Luigi Cossa (1875), Dragonetti disappeared altogether. Neither is he included in Franco Venturi’s influential Settecento Riformatore (1969). The failure of a theory of virtues and rewards to develop within the mainstream tradition of Political Economy is a corollary of the interrupted Civil Economy tradition.

VII. WHAT CAN DRAGONETTI TEACH US TODAY?

There is intrinsic value in bringing to light an author who, although unknown today, had been part of the active debate that has shaped the modern history of social and economic ideas. Rediscovering a protagonist in the European Enlightenment enriches the history of economic thought. There is a second value associated with reconsidering Dragonetti’s Delle virtù e de’ i Premi, however: the important, if yet incipient, new streams of research in economic and social sciences.

In particular, the issues contained in Dragonetti’s theory can be useful for two fields of social sciences: the new literature on rewards compared to punishments; and the debate on virtue ethics and market economy.

The issue of rewards, which is becoming more prominent in economic theory, is used effectively in practical experiments. Concerning rewards/awards, Bruno Frey and Susanne Neckermann have focused in particular on awards, albeit in the sense of medals or academic, artistic, military prizes. This meaning of awards reflects only a part of Dragonetti’s concept, which is much more general than the strictly symbolic phenomena that Frey and Neckermann explore. Dragonetti’s notion of “award” surely includes medals and symbolic prizes, but its fundamental sense has to do with civic virtues.^{Footnote 35} On the other hand, in the literature of experimental economics, the issue of rewards or incentives is gaining prominence.^{Footnote 36} Neither use of “reward” captures the idea of Dragonetti’s premi as it has been defined in this paper. A promising line of experimental inquiry could develop by examining the specific idea of premi and comparing it to both punishments and incentives.

Finally, Dragonetti’s ideas are relevant to the present debate concerning virtue ethics and market interactions. Some would associate virtue ethics closely with a critique of the market and economics. Most virtue ethicists, including communitarian philosophers such as McIntyre (Reference MacIntyre1981) or Sandel (Reference Sandel2010), criticize the ethos of the market economy. They claim that since the market depends on instrumental motivations, it must lack virtue and so must undermine it in other domains of life. Although the philosophy itself is confined to academic discussions, many of the attitudes it supports are echoed in the anti-capitalist and anti-globalization ideas common in public debate. An approach to the market from Dragonetti’s perspective can respond to such criticism in the same language of virtue ethics. Dragonetti’s idea of commerce and market is perfectly coherent with ethics, without renouncing standard market mechanisms such as the search of self-interest. He suggests an idea of economy and possibly economics reconciled with virtue ethics, an approach that can be useful in this age of economic and ethical crisis.