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  • 7 - Enlightenment Constitutionalism and the Rights of Man

  • from Part I - A Revolution in Rights?
  • Edited by Dan Edelstein, Stanford University, California, Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Rights
    Published online:
    22 January 2025
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024, pp 160-181

  • Summary

    Situating Enlightenment theories of rights in a broader arc extending back to the Scientific Revolution, this chapter focuses on the Italian jurists and philosophers who incorporated these theories into constitutional thought. Drawing on the works of Montesquieu and Rousseau, in particular, Gaetano Filangieri sought to reformulate arguments about natural rights in terms of a legislative “science.” This science, which would be eagerly received across Europe and Spanish America, sought to incorporate rights and popular sovereignty into constitutional law. Filangieri also drew on Italian intellectual traditions, which (in the case of Antonio Genovesi) insisted on social, alongside individual, rights. Following the influential example of Cesare Beccaria, Filangieri also paid particular attention to rights in penal matters. His constitutional principles were poignantly, if briefly, embodied in the 1799 Constitution of the Neapolitan Republic, drafted by Francesco Pagano.